Code to detect current page - php

Is there a php or javascript code that can detect the current user's page and then add <a class="active"> to an item in a ul (my menu). I include my menu in my pages with PHP include so making change is easy; I only have to edit it once. But, with that method, I can't individually set each page to have a class="active". How can I do this?

You several options, e.g.,
The part that handles navigations can read the request URI directly. This can be done by reading $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] (don't forget this may include the query string).
At some point, you must know what page you're on, because you decide which content you display based on that. You can define a function that handles the navigation markup and pass it the name of the current page so that it knows which one it is.

If I'm understanding your question correctly, what I usually do is set a variable before I include the header, like
$current = "home";
And then in the header I'd have an if statement in each link
<a href="/home" <?php if ( $current == "home" ) { echo "class='active'" } ?>>Home</a>
Could be ways to improve it, but it's simple if your menu isn't too big.

In PHP, you can look at the value of $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].
In JavaScript, you can examine window.location.

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.

Would like a different nav menu on one specific page... not working

Okay, first off, I am not well-versed in JS or PHP. I can usually change an existing script around to do what I'd like, but not write something from scratch. Any URLs I mention in this for examples are made-up.
With that in mind, I am designing a page using a template that has CSS, PHP, and JS all of which I have really modified. Each page has a header, a nav bar, and a footer that are called with an include statement. I understand that part. However, on ONE of the pages, I would like to have a different nav-bar, and it won't change.
What I have noticed: The JS seems to change the clicked URLs from, say http://www.example.com/test.php to http://www.example.com/#test.php
What would be the purpose for that? Also... if I manually TAKE OUT the hashtag in the URL on the page that I want the new nav-bar, the new nav-bar shows! However, then if I switch pages, it'll make the end of the URL like ...test.php#newpage.php
So I either need to figure out how to modify this to NOT put the hashtag in the URL (but if there is a compelling reason for it, of course, it can stay), OR how to get that one page to show the alternate nav-bar. The alternate nav-bar is a table of contents, so the html has hashtags in it to direct users to specific parts of the page... could those hashtags in the html be conflicting somehow and that is why it won't show up, or??? GAH!
Any help would be appreciated.
Okay, here is part of the javascript... it is the only section where it looks like it is referring to # in the URL:
var $fadeWrapper = $("#fade-wrapper"),
$allNav = $("#main-nav a"),
$allListItems = $("#main-nav li"),
url = '',
liClass = '',
hash = window.location.hash,
$ajaxLoader = $("#ajax-loader");
$("body").attr("id", "");
if (hash) {
hash = hash.substring(1);
liClass = hash.substring(0,hash.length-4);
url = hash + " #inside-content";
$fadeWrapper.load(url);
$("." + liClass).addClass("active");
} else {
$("#main-nav li:first").addClass("active");
}
*UPDATE: I have decided to just remove the javascript altogether. In doing some reading, I have come to the conclusion that the hashtag is there just so the script can tell which page is active, in order for the CSS to highlight one of the items in the navbar. It also has something to do with the animated gif that would show when you navigate pages. Neither one of those items are important enough for me to pull more of my hair out trying to figure out this stuff :D Thank you for your suggestions, though! *
The hash tags are added most likely because the links you are clicking have an href value of #.
Couldn't you just create a new header file (if that is where the navbar code is), modify the navbar how you want in that header file, and include the new file instead of the current header on the page where you want the different navbar?

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.

Css Html JavaScript - Navigation Highlight current selected Menu

i think this question is very easy but I don't know if i am right.
I am an oldschoool html, php coder.
I want to use this kind of navigation:
http://www.cssportal.com/horizontal-menus/13styles.htm
So far no problem. I got an dynamic php page and i want to use this Menu.
There is no problem without this line in the HTML Part:
<li><span>LINK</span></li>
The Problem is the class. What is the smartest way to detect which link is now current?
I would do it in this way. I would write a php script like this pseudo code:
if acutaldocument == "link1.html" then echo "class='current' ";
But i think this is not the smartest way. Or am I right?
Thanks
There's many options...
You can use session cookies, JavaScript, you can pass an id on the end of the url (eg. ?nav=2) or parse the URL and check against it...
All of them work... all of them have there pros and cons... just depends on how your page is set up...
Give each page's body tag an ID. Say, you give the About page's body tag the id "about". Give IDs for all your navigation <li>s too. Say, you give "about" id to the navigation <li>
In your CSS file, do this:
body#about li#about {
// apply differentiating style here...
}
You can keep doing that for all other pages also. And only when both the body ID and the <li> ID match, the style is applied.

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