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Globals

Articles about Globals

2008-02-07 10:45:21

Do you know what happend when register_globals is set to ON in php.ini?? When it is set to ON it registers Environment, GET, POST, COOKIE or Server variables as global variables i.e. you don’t need to write $_POST[’username’] to access the posted ‘username’ variable you can simply use ‘$username’ to access the $_POST[’username’].

By: PHP And Ajax Related Useful Resources and Codes

2007-01-17 06:00:00

If you remember writing CGI applications in C in your early days of web application development, you know how tedious form processing can be. With PHP's register_globals directive enabled, the complexity of parsing raw form data is taken care of for you, and global variables are created from numerous remote sources. This makes writing PHP applications very easy and convenient, but it also poses a security risk. In truth, register_globals is unfairly maligned. Alone, it does not create a security vulnerabilitya developer must make a mistake. However, two primary reasons you should develop and deploy applications with register_globals disabled are that it: Can increase the magnitude of a security vulnerability Hides the origin of data, conflicting with a developer's responsibility to keep track of data at all times All examples in this book assume register_globals to be disabled. Instead, I use superglobal arrays such as $_GET and $_POST. Using these arrays is nearly as convenient as relying on register_globals, and the slight lack of convenience is well worth the increase in security.

By: php webtutorial