I have worked in a PHP project with .phtml files, that means the view contains PHP code and the same goes with a ASP.NET project with the respective .cshtml files that contain C# code. So far so good. However, I never wondered if those extensions, also serve some other purposes. Can someone shed some light and explain the use of those extensions?
For example, in a PHP app with some framework, if some backend code is needed in the view, that code would be in PHP, so why we need to specify a .phtml extension instead of just .html, in our view files?
So technically, we can make any file extension parse in any language we want. For example, if I wanted all .html files to be able to render using PHP I would use something like the following in my httpd.conf (or htaccess if I had the permissions).
AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm
In regards to the .phtml and .cshtml it's most likely that these file extensions are already mapped to render using the appropriate language/framework, meaning it's already done for you and you don't have to manually do it yourself (just as I don't have to map .php files to render using the PHP framework).
Related
I've noticed that the .html and .php file extensions can be interchanged without apparent effect. Why would I want to use one file extension over the other?
A page ending in .php can include both HTML and/or PHP code (also javascript, css, etc inside their appropriate tags). Note that it is perfectly fine for a page without any PHP code to still have the .php extension.
However, if your page does include PHP code, the filename extension must be .php. Try it - on most web servers this won't work:
FILENAME: test.html
<?php
echo 'Hello there';
The above page will be blank. But if you rename it to test.php, you will see the hello message.
Filename extensions are also an indicator to yourself, or other programmers, as to what type of code the file contains. It is clear at a glance that a file ending in .HTML does not contain any PHP code (especially since any PHP code contained within won't work unless the webserver config is specifically modified to allow it).
One Final Note: these days it is pleasing to have web pages that do not end with an extension at all. Of course, you cannot leave off the extension of a .php or .html page... but you can hide the extension (including the period), making the page look like it was served by Flask or React or etc. You do this via a .htaccess file (yes, exactly like that, dot and all) that sits in the root folder of your website (same folder as the index.php or index.html). See:
https://code-boxx.com/hide-php-extension-url-htaccess/
https://tecadmin.net/remove-file-extension-from-url-using-htaccess/
Here is an interesting tool to help build .htaccess files
Use .html as a default.
If your page is running phpscripts then use .php
So, if you are communicating with server, use .php
.html and .php are file extensions but the more important question is how they are run.
A .php file can run server side script and take in mysql queries and open a connection etc...all of which are server-side functions.
Html is static and only displays static content but that has now changed with HTML 5.I suggest you do a simple search to learn more about php and html and their fundamental differences.
Files are handled depending on config and context. Shebangs, default programs, Apache Handler's, HTTP Headers, etc. describe handling files in various scenarios.
Executing Files In Terminal
The .php extension indicates that it is a PHP script, but the extension isn't necessary.
example-file.php
<?php
echo 'Hello World';
The script can be executed with PHP, which is clear because of the extension:
> php example-file.php
example2-file
#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
echo 'Hello World';
With a shebang on the first line the OS can try to use the correct interpreter for the user so that the command is simplified to:
> ./example2-file
Some of the implementation details are hidden from the user by removing the file extension.
Packages often retain the extension on the source, but drop the extension during installation.
Default Programs
An extension can indicate to an OS which program to use to open a file.
Files ending in .php on my computer open in an IDE for editing whereas .html files open in a browser.
Servers and Headers
Web servers can send a file with any extension and content-type since many files don't actually exist, but are dynamically generated.
PHP web servers will serve .php files with the text/html content-type because the PHP is interpreted into text. Servers configured to return the raw PHP file as another content-type, i.e. servers not configured for PHP, will cause the web browser to download the source file rather than view the rendered file as HTML.
Since the resulting file after execution is HTML and web servers can dictate the extension, some developers decide to use .html in the URL and have them correlate to .php files to execute and return. Or the URL can not use an extension at all.
Using distinct extensions has the same purpose in PHP as it does in any language -- it makes it easier to determine the type of file you're using.
You may want to ease your web server's burden by having .html files not ran through the PHP processor, or you may want to have your PHP files not labeled .php to help hide what technology you're using server-side.
When I am starting to build a site that is going to require both HTML and PHP, should I be making a .html file with PHP in it (as in the file would be, say, index.html but within it there would be various tags)? Or, should I be making the files .php files and simply include HTML within it (as in the file would be, again say, index.php and it would start as PHP and I would simply intertwine HTML)?
TL;DR: Should I be weaving HTML into .php files or weaving PHP into .html files?
It should be a PHP file with HTML "weaved" into it. By default if your server sees an HTML file it does not think it needs to process scripts on the page and will render it. If it sees a PHP extension, it knows it needs to run through the PHP Processor.
You can modify your htaccess to allow HTML to be rendered through the processor, but there really is no need for you to be modding that, especially if you are a beginner.
You use PHP files with HTML in it
You should "weave" html into php files That way you know for sure your code will work on any server, and not just on servers that renders html files as php.
You need to specify in your .htaccess file to be able to parse PHP inside of a .html file. The easier way to go is just to make everything .php.
Inevitably, when you get more comfortable with PHP, you'll learn that you'll always have a little PHP in the file (like a require or something), so best to plan for that.
If you are new to PHP, I would recommend creating files with the .php extension, as the .php file can be executed by default. Depending on your server configuration, you may have to add some .htaccess directives to allow php code to run in an .html file.
If you like .html extensions, you can use .phtml files for templating your system, but only for the files that containing html code. And I prefer to use .php files that containing only php code like classes etc (this is what Zend or similar libs do).
I want to that if it is necessary to make files with .php extension or it is possible to add php codes into a file wiht .html extension.
Yes, at the following to the .htaccess file (assuming you're using Apache)
AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php .htm .html
More Info.
Take note that this is not efficient server-wise, as PHP will be fired for all pages in your script (you lose the ability to have high-efficiency static HTML web-pages, which are sometimes needed.
If you want to keep your HTML extension of the file AND you want to use PHP code within the file, you MUST tell the webserver to do so by adding the .html extension and tell the webserver to let PHP handle it.
However, this is hugely inefficient, because PHP will be fired for each HTML request.
I have a website made and i have saved the file as .html, I now want to add a .php file. Is this possible as i have tried so hard to do this. Id appreciate any help given :)
You can do several things.
Rename your .html files to .php.
Tell your web server to pass .html files to the PHP interpreter. In Apache you'd do this by putting AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm in your .htaccess file or your Apache configuration.
If you have installed PHP, you can rename your file to *.php and insert PHP codes!
You want to put PHP code inside a .html file? You'd have to configure the webserver to treat the .html file as a PHP script. Technically, there's no such thing as a PHP script. There's only files which have at least one <?php ?> code block within them. As such, ANY file can contain PHP code. The problem is getting that file into the PHP environment.
Unless your webserver is told to hand the .html file over to the PHP interpreter, you cannot execute the PHP code contained within it - the raw code will get sent out as part of the html page.
Just rename your .html file to .php, if your webhost supports it.
If you run your own server you can even configure PHP to also run .html files, but it's not recommended because of the performance penalty on all html files.
Yes, you can include php file into html file. i m sure that this link will help you.
http://php.about.com/od/advancedphp/p/html_php.htm
I am trying to convert my html page to word doc file. But all php script converts to table based word document and my requirement is that the converted document should be in text based file means a doc file.
I'm a little confused at what you're asking. So I will make a few assumptions and hope I'm answering your question.
You can explicitly state the headers in PHP such that the document you're generating should be viewed as a rich text document with the following line:
header("Content-type: text/richtext");
However, this will, in some browsers, prompt you to download the generated file to your computer, if instead you want to have a rich text file displayed right in your browser you can actually use the .rtf extensions on the PHP file to be run by PHP, but you have to specifically tell Apache (assuming you're using Apache) you want it to interpret RTF files. You can do this by editing your Apache config file and adding RTF like so:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php4 .php .php3 .phtml .rtf
There are online tools that can help you "generate" Word Document files "on the fly" dynamically/programatically using special markup language. Google will help you find the various libraries. This one in particular, which I do not believe is free, has been used by a friend of mine in the past:
rtf.generator
Hope this helps!