Hello All, i like to work in php bcoz it's just amazing language.
please share basic, useful, enhanced and customize function that make things better and easy in php and must be used in our all PHP project, i m sharing some of them please share your customize function that may be useful for everyone

alternative/ enhanced print_r() and var_dump()

function watch( $what ) {
    echo '<pre>';
    if ( is_array( $what ) )  {
        print_r ( $what ); 
    } else {
        var_dump ( $what );
    }
    echo '</pre>';    
}

usage:

 1. watch($_POST);   // to see all post variable
 2. watch($array);  // to see any variable may b array, string or a variable

enhanced mysql_escape_string() for multidimensional array to prevent sql injection

function recursive_escape(&$value) {
    if (is_array($value))
        array_map('recursive_escape', $value);
    else
        $value = mysql_escape_string($value);
}

usage

array_map('recursive_escape', $_POST);

---------------------For encoding Get variables--------------------------------------

function nkode($k)
{
   if ( is_array( $k ) ) return array_map("base64_encode",$k); 
   else return base64_encode($k);

}

---------------------for decoding varaibles from GET---------------------------------

function dkode($k)
{
    if ( is_array( $k ) ) return array_map("base64_decode",$k); 
    else return base64_decode($k);
}

Usage

<a href="somelink.php?pid=<?php echo nkode($someid)?>">
and on next page(somelink.php)
 $findID=dkode($_GET[pid]);

date convert to mm/dd/yyyy to yyyy-mm-dd( if we use date datatype in mysql) and also change into mm/dd/yyyy to disply on page

function dateconvert($date,$func) 
{
 if ($func == 1){ //insert conversion
 list($month, $day, $year) = split('[/.-]', $date);
 $date = "$year-$month-$day";
 return $date;
 }

 if ($func == 2){ //output conversion
 list($year, $month, $day) = split('[-.]', $date);
 $date = "$month/$day/$year";
 return $date;
 }
}

usage

$firstDate=dateconvert($_POST['firstdate'],1); // for insertion in database
$showDate=dateconvert($fetch->date_field,2) // to display on browser

to clean data before doing some action with that variable

function cleanID($data)
 {
  $success=0;
  $data=trim($data);
  $data=strtolower($data);
  $data=strip_tags($data);
  return $data;
 }

usage

cleanID($_POST[username]);
cleanID($_GET[pid]);

please share any basic function that must be used , and please give me some suggestion to make above function more better Thanks