Prevent duplicate code for different web pages with same menu - php

I have a menu that wants to change only the content.
I wanted a separate files for different pages to organize.
I could save menu in a separate php file and include that in the main page.
Still seems a bit repetitive when there are more than 10 menus.
I know there is an anchor tag navigation that updates content part with jQuery.
But I kinda don't like that # tag in the address bar for some reason (or shouldn't I?)
Is there a better way to manage this?

I could save menu in a separate php file and include that in the main page.
Yes. Do that.
I know there is an anchor tag navigation that updates content part with jQuery.
Breaks search engines. Depends on JS. Avoid it.

I don't think that to add just one line with include into each file is indeed such a repetitive task. 99% of local folks a way more repetitive in thir code.
However, if you want something more intelligent, you can create one program file contains menu, and many data files, shown according to user choice
here is a very simple example
Main page<br>
<a href=?about>About</a><br>
<a href=?links>Links</a><br>
<br><br>
<?
if (empty($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'])) {
$name="index";
} else {
$name=basename($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
}
$file="txt/".$name.".htm";
if (is_readable($file)) {
readfile($file);
} else {
header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
exit;
}
?>

Related

best practices - main menu with ajax and clean url's

There are some examples out there that implement a main menu with ajax and use the history API to get nice and expressive url's.
For example: http://diveintohtml5.info/examples/history/casey.html
The problem, following the example, is that you need 2 files per dog, one for the ajax content request, and the other for the url including a header, footer and so on - which even if its just a php include, is annoying to maintain becasue there are lots of duplicate files (especially in the case where there are more people editing the website)
Is there not a better way to do this?
I doubt I am understanding you question correctly but here goes how I would handle it
<?
include("assign.inc");
if ($_REQUEST["hide"] != "all"){
include("head.inc");
}
?>
page content <img src="test.jpg">
<?
if ($_REQUEST["hide"] != "all"){
include("foot.inc");
}
?>
So the ajax call would simply have ?hide=all on the url (or as a post)...if you want to only show the image (and not the text) simply add more criteria (modify hide if's)

Make a self-aware menubar

So, In the website I'm currently designing (HTML5, PHP, JS/JQuery and Bootstrap), I've got a basic menubar at the top of the page. Just your normal
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li class="active">About</li>
<li>Players</li>
<li>Rules</li>
</ul>
Now, there's a lot more to this, such as a login button, etc, but basically it's adding a LOT of clutter to the top of my pages, and I was wondering if there would be any way to put it in a header.php file.
My issue is how I can use it in multiple webpages and still have the class="active" part. The only thing I thought of was making a function where it takes the page name as a string and go through each line and does if (the page is the same as the link) { echo the element with the class="active" } else { echo the element without the class }
Thanks!
You probably want to extract your header to header.php as you said, and then use the PHP include method.
<?php
include 'header.php';
?>
As far as selecting the 'active' class, you could pass and set an '$active' variable on each page. And then, since the included file inherits the scope from the page where it's included, you can get the variable and preform your logic in the header.php page.
http://php.net/manual/en/function.include.php
You can include another php file located anywhere on your server, and have the menu html in there, in a function as you said.
As for keeping the class="active", since you already have it working somewhere, presumably in your main php file, you can just move it to the new header php file that will be included and re-factor if necessary.
I don't know what your code looks like at all, if you post part of it that does the menu, me or someone else will probably be able to help more.

several subpages with same topbar

I have a webpage with several subdirectories for example /search or /friends. Each of this subpages has its own javascript and css files. Now I want all this pages to have the same topbar so if I wanted to change the topbar I would only have to do this in one single place.
What's the common way of doing this? Simple php drops out because of the several scripts and css files. My idea was to call a php script via ajax on each subpage and append the returning string to the body element with jquery's append method but this doesn't seem very clean to me.
How does facebook handle this? Facebook's topbar doesn't even blink when clicking an internal link.
Thanks.
What about using an header.php in all the pages where you want to show your top bar?
To do this just create a file with top bar and save it as header.php and then in your index.php just place include('header.php'); repeat second step for each page where you want to have your top bar.
header.php
// top bar stuff
echo '<ul><li>Link</li><li>Link</li></ul>'; //etc
Other Pages
<?php
include 'header.php';
?>

Minimize code size to avoid duplication of the same code

I need one advice from you. I am working on a website, which uses PHP and HTML. As the biggest part of the header and footer code will be same for many pages, I am thinking of using PHP's include to avoid code duplication. But, each of those pages requires different stylesheets and JS files included. What do you think how could I let the other file know what scripts and stylesheet to import?
Our company does this:
The header reads the filename of the page calling it when it's included.
Then, it changes the extension to '.js' and outputs that if it exists. Same for CSS.
So if I have a page "register.php", it will auto-include "register.js" and "register.css" if they exist.
Here's what I do:
<?php include("includes/headContent.php"); ?>
<title>Page title goes here!</title>
<script src="script_only_used_on_this_page"></script>
<?php
require_once("includes/siteHeader.php");
?>
Site Content Goes Here!!
<?php
require_once("includes/siteFooter.php");
?>
Head Content includes any PHP I want included in every page, as well as the opening html and head tag, and any Javascript libraries and css stylesheets I want on every page. Site header closes the /head tag, and opens the body as well as printing out my site header and some other markup that goes on every page. Finally Site Footer closes out my template. Everything in between is my content area!
There are lots of different ways you can do templating, if you wanted to create a simple include and an echoHeader() and an echoFooter() function... just have the echoHeader function accept a parameter which you would pass your javascript and CSS lines to.
you can use MVC coding pattern

Dynamic site, using include to get content in specific div , how?

I want to use php to easily maintain my website, but I simply can't figure out the language - I've found some tuts online, and some other questions here, but none help me.
I've divided my site into some .php files, header/footer and such - And using
works fine..
Now I want the content of my site, to update according to which menu I click on at my site.
http://dawtano.com/pp/
If I click on "about" I want the "Hello World" to open inside my content div, but I can't get the right php code to do it.
I think you should do this---
Note: This will only work if the CSS styling are on the current directory! ()
<div>
<?php
$html_page = implode('', file('http://dawtano.com/pp/'));
echo $html;
?>
</div>
Hope this helps!
well currently your links are taking you to a separate page entirely. So why not just code it so that your include file is specific to the page. i.e, on about.php, use something like
include 'about_content.php
in your contetnt div.
If you're looking for your content to load dynamically into the content div you'll need to look into using ajax to fetch the content pages.
One popular way to construct the site is to have a single php script which displays content based upon a $_GET variable like 'page' or 'content', and then make the link as:
'http://dawtano.com/pp/index.php?page=helloworldcontent'
Using this method, you would need to check if the variable ($_GET['page']) is set using isset(), and then make sure the string is safe... as anybody with a browser could just type in some mumbo-magic script and hijack your site:
'http://dawtano.com/pp/index.php?page=somecleaverlycraftedhax'
Once it exists and is safe, add the '.php' to the file name and include that file... if it exists! If it doesn't exist, then you will need some code to handle that, probably by displaying a 'File not Found' message, or redirecting home, or something.
I prefer not to do this because it is a pain to make safe, and I feel like it is pretty ugly. What I do instead is put all the header/footer/navbar/title bar scripts into seperate 'display' functions, and put them in another file.
Then include this file with the function definitions, and call all the 'display' functions to set up the page. So every php script in your site might look like:
<?php
include 'html_display_functions.php';
/* put lines here to parse $_GET and $_POST, session_start()/$_SESSION, etc... */
print_html_pre_content();
print '<p>Hello, world!</p>';
print_html_post_content();
?>
Since every script will have this structure, you can just create a template file once. When you want to create a new page for your site, copy the template, rename the copy to the php filename you want, and add content between the two print functions.
You also keep the ability to modify the header/footer/navbar/title bar for the whole site in a central location, namely the included file with the functions.
You might be looking for some sort of Template Engine which allows you to create your pages out of variable parts. You could have a look at TBS, which is more or less what is suggested by the name. But there is a whole lot more engines out there which could do the job.
If that's already too much over the top, maybe Apache SSI (Server Side Includes) are a try for you.
A little suggestion from my side, I am often using Apaches mod_rewrite in connection with a single controller.php file. Apaches mod_rewrite will then send all request to the controller.php which will fetch the appropriate page parts for the requested page using TBS and return the respective page. So you have the controll of the page in one location only.
To your original question about.php could look like:
<?php
include('header.php');
?>
// original page content as html for about.php
// assuming header ends with the starting div <div> where you like the content to appear
// and footer starts with the closing div </div>
// if you need variable content here, simply use <?php echo $your_variable ?>
<?php
include('footer.php');
?>
The best way would be to use a switch statement:
http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.switch.php
Something like this:
<?php
include("header.php");
$page = $_GET['page'];
switch($page)
{
case "about":
include "about.php";
break;
case "faq":
include "faq.php";
break;
case "help":
include "help.php";
break;
default:
include "home.php";
}
include("footer.php);
?>
Then just make all of your links look like this:
http://www.example.com/index.php?page=home
Just replace home with the correct page.

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