CodeSOD: Library Checkout

Alexander doesn't usually ask "why are you hiring for this position?" during an interview. But when a small public library is paying your rather high contracting rate, one can't help but wonder. Fortunately, the library offered their reasoning without Alexander asking: "We hired a new staff member, so we need a programmer to add them to our home page."

Alexander assumed that he was dealing with a client who couldn't figure out how to navigate their CMS, and scheduled an afternoon to do the work. It turned out to be a bit more complicated.

The site had an "email a staff member" form. Select a staffer from a drop down, type into a text box, and hit send. Not a single staff member had ever received an email through the interface, but they all agreed it was a good feature to have, even if no one used it.

The relationship between staff members and email addresses was stored in a database. I'm kidding, why would you use a database for that? It was stored in a PHP file called mail_addresses.php:

/* please maintain alphabetical order */$name=array('Alex'=>'alex@library.com', /* snip a few lines here */ 'Maria'=>'maria@library.com', 'Neil'=>'neil@library.com', /* snip a few lines here */, 'zoe'=>'zoe@library.com');

This is why they felt that they needed a programmer to make changes. No one was comfortable editing PHP code.

While he was poking at it, Alexander also took a look at how those emails got sent:

function send_mail($receiver, $subject, $message) {include('mail_addresses.php');$name=array();$name=$name[$receiver];mail($name, $subject, $message);}

Well, it became quickly obvious why they never received an email- after loading the array by includeing mail_addresses.php they immediately overwrite the array with $name=array().

Fixing that issue was easy, even if it wasn't part of the contract. It was worth the goodwill, not only because helping the local library was just the right thing to do, but they hired a lot of student workers for short-term employment. The mail_addresses.php file changed a lot, and they always needed a programmer to edit it.