filter_var ========== Back port of the filter_var extension to versions of PHP < 5.2.0 The filter var has many useful features but it wasn't packaged into php until php5.2. Since there are lot's of servers out there running earlier versions of php this is an easy way to include that functionality on older servers so that dependancy on this package doesn't break your software. Installation ============ Simply include the filter_var.php file the functionality of the filter_var package will be made available. Development Notes ================= The specifications for the package are taken directly from the php.net pages for the package. The key to this dev process is the unit tests. The project uses SimpleTest mostly because it's super easy to get the test framework working on many different versions of php. The dev cycle follows a TDD paradigm. First a unit test is written and then run with a version of php > 5.2. Then the same test is run on a version of php < 5.2. At this point the test should fail. Then the functionality is added in to make the failing test pass. This of course necessitates multiple versions of php with which to run the tests and if necessary multiple versions of the simple test framework that support the necessary version of php. Questions/Issues? ================= Which versions of PHP is this actually going to support? Practically I only need it to support php5.1. However there is no reason this package can't practically support down to php4. Something to consider... Interesting things... ===================== FILTER_VALIDATE_INT - It seems that this filter does not work for negative integers using octal or hexadecimal numbers. FILTER_VALIDATE_REGEXP - In the php supplied version if a "regexp" option is not passed to the function an E_WARNING error is triggered. Unfortunately in php we cannot trigger an E_WARNING, we can only trigger E_USER_WARNING so we went with that.