hopefully someone here will find the answer to this:
Im looking to have a php code that will generate virtual pages for each city in USA, there are about 32,000 cities so to manually create those pages is nearly impossible, that's why I need a script that will create page virtually for example what I mean take a look here :
http://www.tvbydirect.com/directv-deal/
as you can see in the bottom page there are all the states and then when you click there are all the cities in that state, now notice that the page stays the same (header, contact form, footer) but the content is the same just the city name is changed, also in the meta tags.
what line of code, or script can/will do that ?
PHP acts as a dynamic web framework, there would be need to create static pages, as they can be within the dynamic form.
What you should do is generate a database with the required information and then use PHP To display different data depending on the environment its being called from.
For example, if you had the following web adress:
http://somesite.com/places/usa/washington
yo uwould then use the 2 variables usa and washington and then check the database for the required information.
SELECT information FROM palces WHERE country='usa' AND and city='washington'
And then the information returned from the database would be printed in a custom template.
Related
I'm trying to make 100+ registration pages for my site with minor differences between each one.
For example:
State, Age, Start Date, Client Goal
Page 1 characteristics: California, Age 18-25, Start Date Dec 1, Goal 1
Page 2 characteristics: New York, Age 25-30, Start Date Dec 15, Goal 3
Page 3 characteristics: New Jersey, Age 18-25, Start Date Jan 1, Goal 2
Goal:
It's important that I have separate pages and not just a form or something selected by the user on a single page. Ultimately I'd like to have many more levels of customization than what I have above and would like to control all the pages without having to go in and edit each individually.
Suggested Method:
I was thinking I could make 1 PHP template and use it on every page to pull a unique code from the href to determine what data it gets from the database to display on the page.
To get my page 1 it would be something like:
window.location.href
returns -> mysite.com/CA-18-12-1-G1
Then use that code to set PHP variables which would customize the entire page just by echoing the html with the variables.
Is there a better/smarter/safer way?
I'm fairly new to this.
Think of it this way: you want to make just one page, and you want to render it with 100+ different customizations.
Figure out the common HTML and CSS for your template page, and figure out what needs to change customization-by-customization. You'll have a set of customization parameters when you finish this design work.
Then, design some kind of data structure to hold your customization parameters. A table in MySql with one column for each parameter and one row for each of your 100 customizations might be a good way to do this.
Then write a php program to retrieve the row with the parameters for the customization you want, fill in your common HTML with the customizations, and send it to the browser for your user to fill in.
If you only need two or three custom pages, my advice would be to program them separately. But with 100 you need a template / parameter approach.
For writing a single page and then using the code of that page in multiple pages you can use PHP.
Lets say you have a page named constant.phpand you want to use the code of the page in a different PHP page named home.php. You have to use this code in the home.php where you want the code to be inserted:
<?php include "constant.php";?>
Now the code ofconstant.php code will get inserted in the home.php in the place where you wrote this code.
You may remember that not long ago I asked you for some help with objects transfering through $_SESSION in PHP (more: Data loss during sending via $_SESSION from one script to another ). Currently I'm reworking the whole project and I don't have a foggiest idea how to do it properly. I mean, how to do it "according to the art", not "at any cost / the easiest (but nasty) way".
Here's the mockup of what I want to achieve (animated gif):
As you can see, I want my website to display at startup only the navigation, in which I want user to set his starting parameters. In the future, the navigation bar will have ability to be collapsed (to extend the data display section's height). When user sets the parameters (or not - for default view) and clicks "FILTER AND SORT" (which probably will be renamed to "GENERATE"), the second section should appear with data filtered and sorted as user defined.
Data is read from CSV file and stored in PHP Objects defined by my custom classes I've shown you in the question linked above. So I need to communicate data between 5 files:
FRONTEND:
index.php <-- my main file handling the website
FRONTEND-BACKEND:
navigation.php <-- file that shall be displayed in the navigation div
data.php <-- file that shall be displayed in the data section div / iframe (?)
popup.php <-- file that appears in a div over the index.php when certain DataBox is clicked; handled with tinybox2.
BACKEND:
classes.php <-- file with definitions of classes (properties and methods)
tinybox2 "library".
My communication flow is as to be:
navigation.php displayed on the top of index.php sends filtering and sorting parameters to data.php, making it appear on the bottom of index.php.
data.php and popup.php shall use classes contained in classes.php constructed from CSV file datafile.csv.
When a DataBox is clicked in data.php, popup.php appears over index.php content to display extended object data.
So, how should I do this, to make it properly? Which option will be best: $_POST, $_SESSION or maybe something else? Maybe due to embeeding all files in / over index.php it is possible to store all data in such a way, that no communication is needed? How to embeed files - with include, require or maybe other way?
There are lots of assisting questions, but still, the most important is: how to do it properly? Thank you for your help in advance :)
PS For certainty, please find below one additional usecases:
UC1: Standard use of display system
User enters website with the system
User chooses parameters for filtering and sorting
User starts generating view
Data is being read from *.csv file
During above, data is being filtered and sorted
Data is being displayed by the system to the user
Extensions:
5a. No data to display: system displays empty data section
6a. User want's to filter and sort again: back to step 2.
UC2 (OPTIONAL): User wants to share the data
UC1
User chooses an option to share data
System displays question if user wants to send it to printer, or e-mail
User chooses option (for this case: e-mail)
System asks for e-mail address
User provides e-mail address
System sends an e-mail with the current data.php data as it is displayed on website.
PPS I know I should show you some code snippets, but my current code is a mess with lots of interchanging html, php and comments, that cannot be cut of from the system (or would take me ages to clean it up to show it here). I'm asking you for help mostly, because I really want to remodel the current solution, therefore I'm rewriting the code from zero, using old one as a hint, not a template. Like Microsoft did with Windows Vista and Windows 7 :P Hope you'd understand ^^'
Okay, so here it is. The ultimate answer to a question some understands as too wide.
What was the case:
I wanted to achieve a two-section page, where the first (partent) section takes user input and uses it to filter the data in the second section. The problem was with providing parameters from the parent side to the invoked one.
What I had to change in my conception:
At first I thought about passing data with $_SESSION or other PHP way, BUT there is one major problem with such way of thinking:
As PHP is server side interpreted, it cannot dynamically add another page without refresh!
I know I didn't intent a new lightbulb or explore America, but it's still this conclusion what leaded me to accept the fact, that JavaScript usage is inevitable. I think most beginners will find this important: you need to completely change your way of thinking, as website ain't the same thing as traditional application. After this, it finally came to me (thanks to #Yoshi) that my initial problems with jQuery weren't a good reason to hold back from using it and I had to find out what they were.
Solution comes here:
Okay, so what is the solution?
I've started up with finding out what was wrong with my jQuery and... it was wrong way of interpreting "what is the scope of code included into php". If I include view/header.htm file into index.php that lays in the root directory, it will behave as it was in the root directory, not view directory. And that was the stupidest, as well as not uncommon error that one can make.
After finding this out (thank you #Yoshi again!):
I've created backend (model) for my app that can:
Read data from file
Put data into a class-based storage (that will in the future be then exported into a php file as "pseudo-database")
Then I've created a kind-of controller, that can use the model to pass data to a variable in my view.
At least I've created a view for my site, with the "parent site" (it has a backend part with a main-controller, and a frontend part with a view), and a "invoked site" that is opened through jQuery request, and contains a filtering backend and the main data view.
These 3 not-so-easy at first, but now so-so-essential, steps took me here. Please find some php-pseudocode below:
model_Data.php
<?php
// Class for single instance of data storage
model_DataSet.php
<?php
// Class for set of data instances storage
model_ReadData.php
<?php
// Code for reading CSV file with fgetcsv function
controller_DataMaster.php
<?php
require_once 'model_Data.php';
require_once 'model_DataSet.php';
require_once 'model_ReadData.php';
// Read data from file to a variable
$reader = new ReadData();
$reader->setConfiguration(//some setup);
$tmp_data = $reader->read("filename");
// Put data into the class
$dataSet = DataSet($tmp_data);
return $dataSet;
index.php (which is the main controller!)
<?php
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"');
include 'view/header.htm';
header.htm contains HTML headers, includes of jQuery and jQuery-UI (for sake of datepicker) as well as css references, and (of course) physical header of the website with the input form displayed.
view.php
<?php
$import = include 'controller_DataMaster.php';
$usableData = $import->getAllDataSingles();
if (isset($_POST['data_from_the_form']))
{
// Do something!!!
}
?>
<table>
<tr>
<?php $i = 1; foreach($usableData as $singleData): ?>
<td><pre><?php print_r($singleData->getAllProperties()); ?></pre></td>
<?php if ($i++ % 3 == 0): ?>
</tr><tr>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</tr>
</table>
And this way you can achieve something that looks like this (currently - without any CSS applied):
So here it is. An easy, not very long, not very short answer to my own question. Case closed :)
fairly new to PHP and webdesign.... I have a website which has a bunch of products for vehicles - all of this is stored in a database.
In order to narrow down what products are available, I want to take the user through 2-3 pages where they firstly select what categorey of product they want, then what make of car they have, then the model, then I want to run a mysql query with that information and return the answerson a page.
I already have the code to request the info from a database and then display it on the page, but The way the current website is setup, they are hard coded mysql queries (meaning the user didnt input any data to get there).
So how can I transfer variable between php pages? Page 1 (contains Categorey) - then pass to Page 2 (contains Make) then page to Page 3 (contains Model) then compile the three variavles collections, and pass them to results.php (a standard results page which Gets variables and then searches).
I know this might seem basic, but I am really stumped as to how to get it coded.
If someone can give me an a newbie explanation about how to achieve this? Thank you
You can pass PHP variables through URLs for example
Your HTML code,
<a href='yourPage.php?yourVariable=someValue'>TEST!</a>
Your PHP code,
if (isset($_GET['yourVariable'])) {
$yourVariable = $_GET['yourVariable'];
// Your code here.
}
Now using this you can create what you want with a little bit of tinkering.
Remember
You need to use $_GET because parameters are being passed using the URL and not a POST request.
Don't forget to clean all input.
I have a database of different stores.
When a user clicks on a store name, I want an Ajax function to run displaying information about the store in a different div.
Information categories for all stores wll be the same: products carried, location, general information, etc.
I could easily make it so that each different store uses a different file name as an argument to the ajax function, and all files would have the same layout/format but with different data.
However i feel like this is bad form. How can i make it so that i have one fixed template and all that changes is the information specifics imputed into the template?
Please note that the store information display pages will also need to be able to have clickable links of their own (i.e. click on location and a google map pops up).
Is it something to do with XML? I dont know much about it.
Instead of returning a template, return the data.
So it says getstore.php?id=2 which returns a json string
{"name":"my store", "info" :"blah"}
Then you use java script to insert a new div, populated with that data.
I have a website and I want to make it easier for someone to change certain information being shown without them having to edit the HTML/PHP and using FTP.
At the moment I have this information in a php file which is included in the MYSQL query.
It would be a lot easier if this was done using a form, say a text field where a person can type the table name and it updates on the main page and starts displaying that table instead.
Sorry if I haven't explained this well. :(
I have a good news for you.
Every php/mysql-driven site in the world is made this exact way - to edit site contents using HTML form.
Even first PHP version name was PHP/FI, stands for Form Interpreter.
Even better, a site user doesn't have to deal with mysql - it's all being done in PHP. No need to type table names into form field - all table names already written in PHP code.
Usual PHP application being connected to just one mysql database - so, no need to choose.
As for the tables, it's being done this way: a user selects some human-readable matter, like "Latest news" and being redirected to the PHP script called, say, news.php. this script runs a query for the news table in the database and outputs some HTML formatted news highlights!
Even more, you don't even need to program! There are plenty of ready-made programs, such as Wordpress
store what you want to be editable in a mysql text field.
remove tags you dont want him to see
in the form echo the editable information in a textarea
have him edit
add tags
update the mysql
note depending on the users knowledge depends on how many tags you would like to remove/add. the less per a field the easier.
on more complicated things i like to have the person log in. if he has permission then all the editable fields have an edit button. if he clicks it it goes to a page with a form that he can use to edit that 1 field