Can i generate html code using other coding languages? - php

So, I want to send mails using Mailchimp. To make the process of making those mailing faster, I want to have a standard mailing template.
I tried .htacces to write PHP in my .html file. Sadly, mailchimp does not read any other than the html code, and completely ignores the PHP.
Is there a way to generate html code, so I can do things as import data from my database and get that data to an html file without using php in the file itself?
Or is there maybe anyone who knows a better way of doing things?

Yes, you can generate HTML with other languages, such as Python
See: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6748854/12149235
If you are having issues with MailChimp, there are a few alternatives, such as GetResponse, which isn't directly used with PHP etc, but can be integrated into web applications and so forth.

Related

How can I use PHP to return database data to an existing HTML page?

I am new to PHP. I know a little JavaScript, HTML, MySQL and lots of non-web computer programming.
I know how to create an HTML page with a form, use a button to call an external PHP file (with $_POST) which sends an email and records that forms data (names and email addresses) into a MySQL database.
Now, I'd like to create a new HTML page that calls an external PHP file (so the code is hidden) that will return the MySQL data (names and email addresses) for display on that existing HTML page (with all its CSS formatting and menus). In otherwise, I'd like to modify an existing HTML page with data (but hide the PHP code in an external file).
If this can be done (I'm new to this), can some please help by giving me at least the general idea so that I can build upon it. The textbooks that I've flipped through simply explain how to "echo" data back to the screen (a blank screen) with a .php extension in the address bar.
Thank you very much for your time and any help. I appreciate it!
Since you already have the html to echo part, you'll just need to plug it into the database.
Using a good ORM can help with this. For PHP, I recommend starting with Propel:
http://propelorm.org/
Once you get a bit more comfortable with that, you might want to try using a PHP framework, like Symfony, to help you structure the project in a more uniform way. However, there are many other PHP frameworks out there, so try to evaluate the top ones before settling on a favorite.
Furthermore, the examples provided in PHP framework documentations will guide you through many of the common solutions (as a framework is just a toolkit built by people who have had to solve such problems over and over).
For example, here is the cookbook for symfony that outlines many solutions to common issues.

HTML/PHP beautifier/formatter library written in PHP

I am trying to find a HTML beautifier written in PHP.
My sole purpose is to format or tabify few html/php files that are generated by my program.
I don't need to check whether it is valid or not.
I tried looking up different libraries like Tidy etc. but I couldn't decide which one to use.
Given my purpose is just to format the files on the server, I don't want the overhead of checking for the validity of these files. I need to have support for HTML5 tags and a lot of these libraries do not support them. Hence the only thing I am looking for is to be able to format the files.Something exactly like http://tools.arantius.com/tabifier but for PHP which can be run on the server side.
The files are generated using PHP DomDocument libraries.
I tried to use
file_doc->formatOutput = TRUE;
file_doc->preserveWhiteSpace = FALSE;
$this->file_doc->saveHTMLFile($this->filepath);
but it doesn't work.
The files are not generated totally from scratch. Few tags are added when my program is run and the data is sent back to the server where these tags get appended to the file and saved.
This question is old but you can use HTML purifier
http://htmlpurifier.org/
its has many option, it has one to tidy html code.

Inline PHP in a .JSP?

I am relatively new to web-development and am encountering an issue using some inline PHP code.
The page is a JavaServer Page (.jsp) and I am trying to implement a JFormer form.
When I add my JFormer PHP code to my .jsp page, it just displays as plain-text and refuses to cooperate with me (even when using demo code from the site's documentation). Is this because of some sort of incompatibility between using PHP on a .jsp page?
If that is the case, what are some work-around that I could use? Should I use an iframe?
I need to preserve the use of the .jsp page and would prefer very much to use JFormer, but if I have to I can toss it.
Example of something similar to what I am doing can be found at: http://www.jformer.com/documentation/getting-started/installation/
JSP and PHP are both server-side languages. As such, all scripting in a given file must be processed by the required engines on the server to produce the necessary HTML output.
I suppose it is possible to rig multiple engines inline to process first JSP, then PHP, but that seems cumbersome and error prone.
Instead, consider using an iframe (as you suggested) or load the PHP content via an AJAX call.
PHP is executed by a PHP interpreter and output HTML. JSP is compiled and executed by a Java VM, and output HTML. You can't execute PHP inside JSP code (and vice-versa). It's like if you put Chinese words inside an English speech. Nobody can understand.
I think the point of this is that the examples for jFormer use PHP for the server side logic. If you want to integrate jFormer into your JSP project, learn how to code the equivalent PHP functionality in JSP. You may need to create a Servlet for portions of the logic.
It looks like JFormer requires PHP so you can't make this work on a JSP page easily. You can rewrite the JFormer PHP code in Java/JSP but this may be a lot of work.
The container (like Tomcat) you're using may be able to run PHP scripts as CGI scripts. If you do this you can't easily share session information between PHP and Java. Javascript could be used to accomplish this, but beware of security issues. If you still want to use JSP you could make an iframe that points to the PHP page, as you said.
Here's an article on setting that up for Tomcat:
http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/UsingPhp
Disclaimer: I don't know JFormer.

advice on php parsing

I am using phpTumblr, a wrapper around the tumblr blog api that allows you to access posts via php.
I want the site to display new posts dynamically, so I am using php to write html code. I find myself writing things like print(blablabla); or print(); ... and so on, and setting the header of the document to text/html, so that the browser would read it as html.
This just seems to me like a kind of ugly hack, and I was wondering if most dynamic pages are set up in this way, or are there different ways to convert php objects(say arrays) automatically into html tags. So far it doesnt seem like there are any.) maybe i have to be using some CMS software?
Any advice would be great.
Thanks
I believe what you're describing is known as a template engine. It essentially separates the logic from the UI, and allows you to write dynamic pages without an excessive number of print or echo statements.
For PHP, I would recommend Smarty, but Google can also help you with finding alternative ones if you find you don't like it.
PHP is a language in which you can do alot of different things and one of them is to send output to browsers. So if you want to print an array as HTML code , write a PHP function for it. PHP has NOTHING to do with HTML tags directly.
Like the above post mentions you can use Smarty templating engine ... BUT then you will need to learn the smarty language to print the array :)
All scripting languages work in this way. So lets say if any xyz language supports a function called print_array_as_html($array) .... then observe that it is a function. That's the idea of having functions/methods in a language , extend the functionality to get what you need.

Any PHP -> jQuery libraries out there?

Have any bridge libraries been developed for PHP that provide access to the jQuery framework? Ideally it would be nice to have something fairly extensible so that creating jQuery-based content using PHP code would be fairly easy and customizeable. Does such a thing exist yet?
pquery
jqpie
jquery-php
There's a warmup list.
So far I've found one that seems to fit the description. I haven't tried it out yet, so if anyone has any feedback or experience with this or other ones don't hesitate to post!
PQuery
jQPie might be what you're after.
What can jQPie do?
Easily request and process data from php using $.getJSON
Inject php generated html into elements using $.(element).load
Call php functions directly from your web pages using $.jqpie
Call jQuery from php in respond to $.jqpie calls
Advanced autocomplete using jqpie_complete
QueryPath (http://querypath.org) is a full implementation of the jQuery DOM/XML/HTML part of jQuery. QueryPath has full CSS 3 selector support (including the stuff jQuery doesn't have, like XML namespace support). It also comes with DB tools, where you can run queries and have the results inserted into the query object. And it has a template engine, too. Like jQuery, you can write custom extensions very easily.
But it definitely takes advantage of its server-side status.
The main project page is at https://fedorahosted.org/querypath. You can download it there (and see lots of examples, including RSS and SVG manipulation).
Integrating with jQuery, then, can be done easily by sending XML data of many sorts down to jQuery. (You could probably send JSON, too... never tried.) And since the server side code and the client side code both look the same, there's less of a need to learn two totally different toolkits.

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