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Querystring Hacking with PHPQuerystring Hacking with PHPQuerystring Hacking with PHP 06/05/2005 11:46 PM PHP and Standards: arg_separator.output: A few months ago, I went ballistic on querystring arguments. I rambled on about how I hate them and go to ridiculous lengths to avoid them. I think I'm somewhat insane in this respect. Well, I found out today that PHP can be set to parse the querystring differently using the "arg_separator.input" ini setting. You could have it use semi-colons or whatever, and it would correctly parse the querystring into the $_GET array. However, I can't see a setting to change the key/value separator, which must have to stay the equals sign. Anyone else know how to change that...you know, just so we can make our apps completely non-standard? This is a GrokNews Entry: (what is grok?)Querystring Hacking with PHPGrok Headline matches for Querystring Hacking with PHPMy Querystring Argument NeurosisMy Querystring Argument Neurosis 03/22/2005 04:32 PM I have a serious Web development neurosis: I hate querystring arguments. You know the garbage after the page name in a URL? Like this:
I hate them. I think they're ugly, unweidly, and expose too much of your application to the world. This is an utterly irrational thing, I know, because querystring arguments work perfectly well. I just need to get over myself. But is the querystring argument falling out of fashion? A lot of apps now run all requests through a single page, and they grab and parse the URL themselves. For instance:
This would show page 1 of products in the hunting gear category. There is no "products" or "hunting_gear" folder or file named simply "1." Instead, this URL is mapped to an actual block of code. You can do this with a RewriteRule pretty easily (you could do it with a PHP auto-prepend file too). In my PHP apps, I use an AliasMatch rule to route everything to a single page and I have a mapper like this:
This uses a regular expression to map a URL pattern to a file. If the first "directory" is "product," the second is a number of some kind, and the third is "edit," then send them to the page to edit a product. That page will grab the number out of the URL and use it to load an object. J2EE does this too, to map URL strings to servlets (I forget what the file is called..."web.config," maybe?). I have no doubt that .Net has the same functionality in there somewhere. I think Rails does this too, from what Joe tells me. Using the A cceptPathInfo directive for Apache, you can do things like this:
But that just looks sloppy to me. I don't know why. eZ publish does this by default, and it bugs me to no end. Finally, today I found this, and it's what prompted me to write this little diatribe:
So they're using AcceptPathInfo, but each "directory stop" along the way is a key-value pair. I like this. It speaks to the aesthetic in me, or to the neurotic, depending on how you look at it. This last example perhaps proves that it's just the syntax I don't like — all those &'s and ='s floating around are like fingernails on a blackboard to me. This example is key-value just like traditional querystring arguments, so the function is the same, just the syntax is different. The colon-slash syntax just looks cleaner to me. Am I the only one with this problem? Does anyone else hate querystring arguments as much as me? Parsing a Querystring With PerlParsing a Querystring With Perl 12/19/2002 07:40 PM Stickysauce Dec 19 2002 6:46PM ET Car hackingCar hacking 12/19/2004 03:40 PM Race for the Ultimate Car Hacks By Michelle Deli People have been tinkering with their cars since the first horseless buggy hit the road. Now, thanks to onboard computerized systems that control everything from engine management systems to radios, hackers can customize their rides in ways that are likely to have Henry Ford doing back flips in his grave. Feeding this need for speed with aftermarket computer chips and simple upgraded components gneerates $25 million… Direct and Related Links for 'Car hacking' Hacking Mac OS XHacking Mac OS X 03/28/2005 03:16 PM Who's hacking who?Who's hacking who? 07/11/2004 06:20 PM Macleans Online Jul 11 2004 9:28PM GMT GIF HackingGIF Hacking 09/08/2004 12:27 PM Common knowledge says that modifying a compressed image is a bad idea. Not always, though. Features: Hacking XMLFeatures: Hacking XML 09/15/2004 07:42 PM Among author Mike Fitzgerald's favorite hacks in XML Hacks are two that use SP, James Clark's free, open-source SGML-parser package. The first hack shows how to convert a minimally tagged document to well-formed XML. The second shows how to convert a Wiki format to XML via SGML and SP tools. Hardware Hacking In The WSJHardware Hacking In The WSJ 09/08/2004 10:35 AM Hacking CrusoeHacking Crusoe 02/10/2004 02:44 AM RWT is running an serious of articles by an anonymous author who has done an impressive job of reverse engineering many of the technical details of Transmeta's Code Morphine Software and the VLIW hardware at the core of Crusoe. Hacking An ElectionHacking An Election 02/10/2004 02:41 AM Nothing particularly new here if you've been following the whole issue on problems with electronic voting machines, but Salon has a fairly comprehensive piece describing the concerns of those who want to stop current voting machines from being used in elections. It describes some of the not-quite-so-secure techniques Diebold used to "secure" their machines - including leaving the necessary password out in the open. It also talks about how comments in the source code of the Diebold machines make it clear that the engineers knew that parts of the software don't work, and yet it was still used in elections. The responses from those who defend the electronic voting systems are a bit scary, as they basically ignore the point. Instead, they talk about how other voting methods have problems as well, and how difficult or expensive it would be to fix these voting machines. Whoever said democracy was supposed to be cheap? Update: Whoops. A new report says electronic voting machines in North Carolina lost 436 ballots last year. Wi-Fi hacking, a primerWi-Fi hacking, a primer 08/13/2004 09:18 AM Hacking the MuVo2Hacking the MuVo2 01/22/2004 03:24 PM A reader points us towards an interesting hack involving Creative's new 4GB MuVo2 MP3 player. It seems that it's 4GB MicroDrive isn't soldered to the... Hacking RealityHacking Reality 01/16/2004 10:59 AM "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." --Albert Einstein Hacking the planetHacking the planet 08/05/2004 02:23 PM Hacking TextHacking Text 05/10/2004 04:21 PM CNET posts an inter esting New York Times article about a group of European researchers who have found ways to 'un-black' blacked out text in documents like those released by the government in recent months by using a process-of-elimination technique to figure out what words fit under the obscured area.
Via BoingBoing. Click here to comment on this entry Hardware HackingHardware Hacking 04/23/2004 01:31 PM Embracing the Art of HackingEmbracing the Art of Hacking 05/19/2004 04:42 AM If you can avoid some of the tedious bits, Paul Graham has some good points to make about the relationship between art and coding. Michelle Delio reviews Hackers and Painters. Hacking IdolHacking Idol 05/17/2004 02:54 PM It's great to finally hear someone talk about phone phreaking and other attempts to subvert American Idol voting. Just last week I was trolling the web looking for web-to-SMS gateways to see if one could write a bot to vote-spam an American Idol contestant. To hear that folks are using automated dialers to shut out voters seems even more obvious. They should probably just make the voting a 900 number, at say, 50 cents a vote, in order to limit hackery but people could still simply jam the lines with DoS attacks using dialers. - Law Against Internet Hacking- Law Against Internet Hacking 08/30/2004 08:01 AM Hankooki Aug 30 2004 12:28PM GMT Hacking the RoboSapienHacking the RoboSapien 09/19/2004 02:15 AM Is Hacking EthicalIs Hacking Ethical 05/13/2004 09:40 AM Google hackingGoogle hacking 02/15/2004 11:32 PM Information Highways Feb 16 2004 3:47AM GMT ""Hacking" Revisited"""Hacking" Revisited" 02/13/2004 02:37 PM No medals for hackingNo medals for hacking 08/22/2004 11:17 PM USA Today Aug 23 2004 3:14AM GMT Law Against Internet HackingLaw Against Internet Hacking 08/30/2004 08:01 AM Hankooki Aug 30 2004 12:08PM GMT Hacking Away At AppleHacking Away At Apple 03/26/2005 10:22 PM Apple has traditionally been regarded as partially immune to the exploits of hackers and virus writers, thanks to its low market share -- but those days may be over. By Steven Musil, CNET News.com Hacking the Hotel TVHacking the Hotel TV 09/24/2004 05:40 PM How to get your video from their TV Hacking: A historyHacking: A history 04/12/2005 03:46 AM News.bbc.co.uk - Mon Apr 11, 08:41 am GMT Man charged with hackingMan charged with hacking 07/23/2004 11:35 AM globetechnology.com Jul 23 2004 3:26PM GMT Hacking your Car StereoHacking your Car Stereo 06/17/2005 06:10 PM
The total cost of the mod is under $1 (if you already have basic wiring tools and supplies), and it's a great way to ruin your dashboard if you mess up. Car Stereo Auxiliary Input [MattGilbert] Hacking QuartzHacking Quartz 07/06/2004 03:19 PM Social HackingSocial Hacking 06/05/2005 10:46 PM While I'm really glad that smart people like Tim O'Reilly and Chris Anderson are enjoying t-shirt media hack, I'm realizing that the really terrifying thing is that everybody in my social circle knows what Goatse is. But Tim's right, of course. The only thing bloggers love as much as a... Hacking ExplainedHacking Explained 12/30/2003 01:29 AM Hacking Mac OS X PantherHacking Mac OS X Panther 07/03/2004 10:01 AM Rael Dornfest, coauthor of Mac OS X Panther Hacks, has selected these three hacks from the book for your sampling pleasure. The first two detail how to find anyone in your Address Book who has an Amazon Wish List, and how to build a GUI to your Unix scripts with a bit of Perl or Python; the third is just for fun. Enjoy. By Rael Dornfest, O'Reilly Network (via MyAppleMenu) More Roomba hackingMore Roomba hacking 07/14/2004 10:00 AM 
Another group of hardware hackers have at a Roomba robotic
vacuum cleaner:
"For higher level control, we've attached a Virgin Webplayer. The Webplayer was sold as a loss leader for Virgin's internet service in the late 90s, and thus can be found on ebay for under $100. It has two serial ports, a 200MHz Geode processor, 64M ram, and a miniPCI port. Thus, we can give it an 802.11b card, a webcam, and a usb-serial adapter."Link (via MetaFilter) Lowering the bar for hackingLowering the bar for hacking 03/19/2003 10:25 PM Information related to 55,200 social security numbers were "stolen" from the University of Texas, and the "hacker" has turned himself in. His crime? Scanning ~2.7 million social security numbers through a web interface. Obviously there are some security concerns here. Hacking Your GPS FirmwareHacking Your GPS Firmware 04/01/2005 11:21 AM Hacking matterHacking matter 06/24/2004 06:41 AM I've been reading Wil McCarthy's book Hacking Matter, which is a popularized version of the serious study of quantum dots and the ability to build pseudomatter using artificial atoms. How can one not like a book, which contains wonderful sentences such as this one:
I mean - even the minuscule thought of it is breathtaking! The wonders of the universe! How could one not love this world, when so many incredible things are about? This could, and would change the face of the world as we know it. You just flick a switch, and you can make a part of the wall transparent - or a light source - or a TV screen - or gold. Whatever pleases you. As an aside, I also found another very interesting paragraph (among thousands, but this one has an ominous look):
Note that even in the US, patents are generally considered secret and proprietary, until a year of the filing date has passed. This is so that the application can be amended, fixed, and just being kept secret from the competitors, who might find a way to redesign around the actual implementation (ideas are not patentable as such). Obviously, the military is ignoring all that and have their own informants within the US patent process... Somehow, that does not surprise me at all. Hacking, downloading and bad web designHacking, downloading and bad web design 07/20/2004 08:02 AM Letters Very 21st century offences Grok Description matches for Querystring Hacking with PHP GrokA matches for Querystring Hacking with PHP Opera Browser Address Bar Spoofing
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iPod enthusiast Matt Gilbert has
thrown together a nice, cost-efficient hack to get the iPod running
directly to a car stereo without having an auxiliary input. He had
experienced static and interference when using FM Transmitters or
cassette adapters, and this tweak uses a toggle switch and some wire
splicing to create a direct line-in into any car stereo.