So I would have a template file called template.php and inside, it would have:
<html>
some other content
<?php $name ?>
</html>
Essentially, I want to pull the name from the database and insert it into $name and save that entire page as a new file.
So let say in the database, I had a name called Joe, the new file I create would have the following content inside:
<html>
some other content
Joe
</html>
The only issue I am having is finding the right functions to actually replace the variable from the template file, and being able to save it into a new file.
That's not how templates usually work. You should have a template file, substitute variables for their values, and display it to the user. You can cache these generated templates (the ones that are always the same) but you never make a new template file for each user and save it permanently. That makes managing and updating the application way more difficult than you want.
I recommend using a simple template system like RainTPL. That's what I use for most of my projects... it's very simple to use and provides all the basic functionality you would need.
You can also use just PHP for this... there are a few answers on SO that cover this so I won't get into it.
Using PHP as template engine
Using Template on PHP
Look at the answer I gave to this question a while back. There I explain how "variable parsing" usually works.
When I create a template loader I generally use output buffering with php include. This allows you to run the page as a php file without displaying its content before you are ready. The advantage to "parsing" your php files this way is that you can still run loops and functions.
Here's an example of how to use output buffering with PHP to create what you're wanting.
The Template template.php
<html>
some other content
<?php $name ?>
</html>
Where your database code and stuff is index.php
<?php
$name = 'John Doe';
if( /* some sort of caching system */ ) {
$parsed_template = file_get_contents('parsed_template.html');
}else {
ob_start();
include 'template.php';
$parsed_template = ob_get_clean();
file_put_contents('parsed_template.html', $parsed_template);
}
echo $parsed_template;
?>
Related
I am trying to roll my own MVC purely for learning purposes, but am hitting a snag when I try to load in the view files. Here's my problem:
Front controller grabs appropriate page controller, page controller include_once() the appropriate view. The view is a file containing HTML and PHP. When I return the include file from the controller, the included file content appear out of sequence of the PAGE layout intended. (example: I want to display HEADER CONTENT FOOTER, but when I include the view's contents, my controller spits out CONTENT, HEADER, 1, FOOTER).
In my front controller I am attempting to set my included file contents to a variable I then echo in between my HEAD and FOOTER in the PAGE template. But this does not work as intended. I can wrap my view file contents in: return "code" but I don't want the added headache of worrying about stray quotes/double quotes in my view code that could break the script. I have tried file_get_contents(), but this only spits out a string (albeit in the right place/sequence in my template) and does not the PHP in my view files correctly (ie at all).
My question is: Is there a way I can return my view file to my front controller using include_once() in a variable? I can't seem to find a adequate answer to this. I'd be happy to add my code if it would help.
You can assign a return value from an include(). A lesser-known feature of this function is that you can have a file like this:
<?php
// config.php
return array('database_host' => 'localhost');
and you can read it in thus:
<?php
$config = include('config.php');
However, you're wanting to do this:
<!-- text.html -->
<h1>Heading</h1>
<p>Hello</p>
and read it in with this:
$html = include('text.html);
You can try doing that, but as soon as the include() scans the file, the output will be sent to the web server. That's how PHP works. Since there is no explicit return value, moreover, the $html variable comes back empty.
Thus, we use the output buffering functions to modify PHP's behaviour: we start buffering, and then we fetch it and clear it. This is then not sent to Apache, unless of course you choose to turn off output buffering and echo what you have collected, in which case it goes back into the normal output buffer and is actually sent.
I need to generate PDF files from HTML templates and plan on using wkhtmltopdf to do that. Inside the HTML templates, I need to be able to use PHP logic to adjust what the template will render. Take this HTML template for example:
<p>Dear <?php echo $firstname; ?>,</p>
<p>Thanks for signing up. You've invited these people along with you:</p>
<ul>
<?php foreach ($invitees as $invitee): ?>
<li><?php echo $invitee; ?></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>Chris White</p>
I have no problem being able to pass a HTML template file to wkhtmltopdf but I don't know how to get the PHP logic inside it to run correctly and be able to return the resulting template. I came across this blog post while Googling but the author uses Smarty as a template language: https://davejamesmiller.com/blog/php-html-pdf-conversion-using-wkhtmltopdf
Using Smarty would solve my problem but I don't want to bring in a library to do this when I can just use plain old PHP. Basically, I need a way to pass in variables to the HTML template (in this case $firstname and $invitees), have it execute the PHP code inside the template and then return the resulting template after the PHP has been executed.
Any ideas?
Just save your file as php (for example template.php) and implement there the logic you need.
I did the same also with wkhtmltopdf and it worked great.
I also passed some variables over GET to the template to really get the correct report as pdf.
To save the file I used the PHP session id and saved the file to a folder with write permissions for www-data (Linux) and started the download automatically via Javascript.
I had the same need and I did it like that. Don t really know if my code will help you but why not.
First I used composer to get https://github.com/mikehaertl/phpwkhtmltopdf.
lets say you have a php file " content.php "
<?php
echo "<html>";
echo "<h1>test</h1>";
echo "<html>";
?>
your index.php will be :
<?php
require "vendor/autoload.php";
ob_start();
require('content.php'); //The php file
$content = ob_get_clean();
$pdf = new \mikehaertl\wkhtmlto\Pdf($content);
if (!$pdf->send()) {
throw new Exception('OMG WHY : '.$pdf->getError());
}
If you're not using any template engine, can't u just call your template.php file with some params ?
Something like
$wkhtml2pdf->html2pdf('template.php?firstname=Foo');
(I have no idea how wkhtml2pdf works, this code is just for you to understand the logic)
and in your template.php file :
<p>Dear <?php echo $_GET['firstname']; ?>,</p>
I have completely no idea about smarty template system. What I am trying to do is include a php file to get some variable inside a .tpl file (this is a WHMCS template).
I have tried like:
{php} include ('file.php'); {/php} //doesn't work
{include_php file='file.php'} //doesn't work
I have also followed the answer of this question. Still couldn't get it working.
How can I include code.php inside header.tpl of WHMCS? Any help please?
Just for reference: both tpl and php file is in the same directory, if that helps anyway.
It's really not recommended to use php code in Smarty. In fact it's now deprecated and you should avoid such solution as much as possible because it often doesn't have sense.
However if you really want to use PHP in your Smarty files for some reason you need to use SmartyBC (Smarty Backward Compatibility) class instead of Smarty class.
So for example instead of:
require_once(_PS_SMARTY_DIR_.'Smarty.class.php');
$smarty = new Smarty();
you should use:
require_once('SmartyBC.class.php');
$smarty = new SmartyBC();
Then you will be able to use PHP in your Smarty template files
EDIT
If you have just problem with including it's probably your directories problem (however you haven't showed any errors).
I assume you have your files inside your templates directory and you set it properly using:
$smarty->setTemplateDir('templates');
if you simple display index.tpl file in Smarty and you have this PHP file in the same directory (in template directory) you can include it without a path.
However if you include in this index.tpl file another tpl file, when you want to include php file you need to pass the full path to this PHP file, for example:
{include_php 'templates/file.php''}
Your using Smarty the wrong way. The whole point of Smarty is to NOT include any PHP in your presentation bits (views, a.k.a. the good ol' HTML).
So, whatever you're trying to do in that PHP file, just let it do its magic, but send the actual result to Smarty. For example, do you want to show a table of users you get out of a database? Execute the query, fetch the result and pass the results (like an array of results) to smarty like this:
<?php
$smarty = new Smarty();
$users = $db->query('SELECT * FROM users');
// Assign query results to template file.
$smarty->assign('users', $users);
// Compile and display the template.
$smarty->display('header.tpl');
Now, in your smarty template you can access that array like this:
<html>
{foreach from=$users item=user}
Username: {$user->username}<br />
{/foreach}
</html>
I hope you see where I am going. Keep your application logic in the PHP file, and let the template just take care of the looks. Keep the template as dumb as possible!
You get data into Smarty by assigning it. Embedding PHP is not recommended, and deprecated from Smarty 3.
php:
$smarty->assign('foo','bar');
smarty:
{$foo}
I'm attempting to make a template file for a CMS that I'm making where the template file can contain variables like {username} as regular text that get replaced when the page gets included on the index.php page.
Example:
Index Page:
<?php include('templates/123/index.php'); ?>
templates/123/index.php page
<?php include('header.php'); ?>
Welcome {username}
<?php include('footer.php'); ?>
I've tried several methods; however, always run into problems because the page I'm trying to change the content on includes PHP code. Every method I try either 1) messes up because the opening and closing of PHP tags within the document OR 2) just echoes out the PHP code in the document. Is there any way that I can still achieve this? Maybe even with a class of some kind? I just want to be able to achieve this safely.
I will also be using this to where custom variables like {content1} get replaces with a php code that will be ioncubed that retrieves the data from database for content located in column1, same with {column2} {column3} and {column4}. I'm just trying to make the creation of templates extremely easy. (so I'd like to make the code work for that as well)
My preferred method of doing stuff like this involves starting my code with:
ob_start(function($c) {
$replacements = array(
"username"=>"Kolink",
"rank"=>"Awesome"
);
return preg_replace_callback("/{(\w+)}/",function($m) use ($replacements) {
return isset($replacements[$m[1]]) ? $replacements[$m[1]] : $m[0];
},$c);
});
Two steps I suggest
Load the result of your file "templates/123/index.php" into a variable. see this link for how to do it assign output of execution of PHP script to a variable?
use strtr() function to replace your placeholder i.e {username} with actual values
I think this will server your needs.
How can I replace the text on the active document body on a PHP file on code execution?
Do I have to import a file, replace text on it and then echo it or can I just manipulate the document I run the PHP script on?
I am trying to use templates for easier HTML editing like :usernamecomeshere: and then replacing that :usernamecomeshere: with the actual value. I am wondering If I can do it on one file only instead of loading a file and then displaying it.
If I'm getting your question correctly, you don't need to important a file and echo the document. You can directly manipulate the document itself. For example, in the below sample, you can directly echo the contents of $username in a way that's interspersed with HTML code.
index.php
<?php
// handle code to login
$username = "David";
?>
<html>
<body>
<p>Hello, your username is <?php echo $username ?></p>
</body>
</html>
Worth pointing out is that PHP itself is a templating engine. If you want to replace text, you can do it using PHP such as:
<?php
$user = 'Ugur';
?>
<html><head></head>
<body>
<h1>Hello <?php echo $user; ?></h1>
</body>
</html>
Beyond this sort of simple usage, you may want to look at various template engines, which allow you to do much more elegant things, but are more complex. Take a look at mustache, perhaps?
If you're trying to make these modifications after the page has loaded, remember that PHP runs on the server-side, not the user-side. For that, you need Javascript.
you'll want to look up str_replace() on google. You can search an entire string and replace specified keywords simply.