Introduction

In an effort to help others learn some really nifty PHP tricks, I’m going to start this series of PHP quizzes. I’ll explain a few concepts and then pose a problem that can be solved using those concepts. Don’t expect rocket science here, but definitely use it as a resource to learn a lot about PHP in a short space of time. Especially if you are a newcomer, or if you just want to see how much PHP you know.

Concepts To Know

Function: file_get_contents

file_get_contents offers a very simple way to download a file or image or any URL. You can use it like this:

  $data = file_get_contents("http://www.ardi.co.za");

Function: explode

Explode takes a string and breaks it up into pieces and places those pieces in an array. So if you have this string:

  MY-LONG-STRING

And you use explode like this:

  explode("-", "MY-LONG-STRING");

You will end with an array like this:

  array (
    0 => 'MY',
    1 => 'LONG',
    2 => 'STRING',
  )

Quiz 1

IP2C.org offers a free IP to location service. Try it by opening these urls in your browser:

• http://ip2c.org/127.0.0.1
• http://ip2c.org/198.57.216.24

Your task is to:

1. Create a PHP file that accepts an IP address as input.
2. Use “file_get_contents” to fetch the data from ip2c.org for the ip that is specified as input
3. Use “explode” to split the result you get from ip2c.
4. Based on the result, either outpout
   a) the country the ip belongs to, or
   b) an appropriate error