CSS navigation with PHP include - php

Question

I am making a CSS navigation bar, which is stored in a folder called 'includes'. Basically what I want is, when a link is clicked, for it to become active. Im linking to this folder with "include('includes/header.php');"
My CSS is:
nav ul li a {
font-size:22px;
color:#fff;
height:67px;
line-height:67px;
text-decoration:none;
min-width:101px;
text-align:center;
float:left;
background: grey;
border-right:1px solid black;}
nav ul li a.current, nav ul li a:hover {padding-bottom:5px;}
The content of header.php is:
<header>
<div class="container">
<nav>
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>Services</li>
<li>Blog</li>
<li>Forums</li>
<li>Contact</li>
<li>Account</li>
</ul>
</nav>
How do I go about using this method, and having each link made active when clicked?

Answer 1

You could do something like this for the header
<ul>
<li><a <?php if (isThisTheCurrentPage) echo 'class="current"'?> ...>...</a></li>
<li><a <?php if (isThisTheCurrentPage) echo 'class="current"'?> ...>...</a></li>
<li><a <?php if (isThisTheCurrentPage) echo 'class="current"'?> ...>...</a></li>
...
</ul>
Once I had to do something similar, and I achieved this by setting some variables at the beginning of each php file. Then, the header.php must test these variables in the if statements.

Answer 2

I did something like this in the past very similar to what Romain said:
I named each page something like and included the nav file:
<?php $page = 'one';
require_once'./template/nav.php';?>
Here is the content of my nav file:
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
<li <?php echo ($page == 'one') ? "class='active'" : ""; ?> >
Home</li>
<li <?php echo ($page == 'two') ? "class='active'" : ""; ?> >Page two</li>
<li <?php echo ($page == 'three') ? "class='active'" : ""; ?> >page three</li>
</ul>
Hope that helps