Writing to a Specific Part of an HTML Document

Anon

Hi there,

I'm relatively new to PHP3, and I just wrote a script that creates an HTML page for my site (www.spleaf.net) based on input from a form, allowing my staff to post updates without me manually adding them.

However, I need to be able to link to these new pages from my main page, meaning I need to have the script post content to a SPECIFIC part of a pre-existing page.

For example:

I want to be able to write data to this area on one of my pages:

<- Begin New Post ->
...
<- End New Post ->
With ... being the data I wish to write. How would I do this?

Thanks,
Cass

Anon

At the point that you want to insert the PHP code put:
<?php
// inseert php code here
?>

That's it.

Cassius wrote:

Hi there,

However, I need to be able to link to these new pages from my main page, meaning I need to have the script post content to a SPECIFIC part of a pre-existing page.

For example:

I want to be able to write data to this area on one of my pages:

<- Begin New Post ->
...
<- End New Post ->
With ... being the data I wish to write. How would I do this?

Thanks,
Cass

Anon

See subject.

Let me explain better.

I will be making a form, in which users will enter data. This will be one HTML page.

I then want that data to appear in a specific part of another HTML page. To do that, I need to figure out how to write to a specific part of an HTML page.

ie: I want to open index.html, find <-new post here->, and then write the post there.

Anon

You could store what the user enters in a file or table and then have the index.PHP page retrieve it like in David's example. Sometimes that is not efficient or possible for your application, so...

I do something similar on certain pages (like letting customers maintain their own "links" pages through a form) when it is not efficient to store the data in a table and hit the database for every page view when the page really doesn't change that often.

What I do is I have the form processor re-generate the entire links page when someone enters or modifies the information. It simply writes out the static stuff hardcoded in the program along with the new / modified information and replaces the existing "links.html" page with the new one.

Hope this is helpful to you.

-- Rich --

Anon

Thanks, now we're getting somewhere!

That solves a few problems for me, but my biggest one remains:

I don't know how to set the file pointer to a specific point in a document (a line number is no good, as the document changes size with every post anyway).

The post needs to be placed at beginning of the "news" section (a large table).

My idea was to place an HTML comment there and have PHP somehow recognize that comment as the place to start writing. I just don't know how.

Anon

Well, you could:

Create a file with as a template (index.tmp) that has all of your "index.html" text except the news section. Put some type of unique string in the file where you want the "news" inserted.
Have the form processor create a string ($newdata) with the data from the form.
Have the form processor read in index.tmp with fread() and put it into a string variable ($indexhtml).
Then use ereg_replace() to replace your place holder string with the formatted data from the form ($newdata).
Have the form processor unlink("index.html"), fopen() a new "index.html", and then fwrite($string) to the new "index.html".

-- Rich --

Anon

That seems like too much work. Instead of searching for a magic string, just split
the template file into two pieces, before and after.

Anon

That would be my first inclination, too, but Cassius seems to be determined to use the replacement string method.

Besides, keeping a "header" and "footer" makes sense if you were going to use include() in a php script, but I get from his/her posts that the "index" page is an *.html file and not a php script. Using the header/footer method to replace the "index.html" page in our scenario would still require most of the work I outlined. In fact, you would have to open both files and fread() them into $header and $footer variables and concatenate them with the $newdata variable and then write out the new file anyway.

One half dozen or the other...

Anon

While I'm liking it for the most part, I came across one very odd problem. Let me show you the test code I was using:

<?php

chdir("articles");
$ArticlesIndex = readfile("testindex.html");

$ArticlesIndex = ereg_replace("Reviews", "Replace Test", $ArticlesIndex);

PRINT("$ArticlesIndex");

I was replacing Reviews, text prominently displayed on the page in question, with Replace Test, then displaying the result.

The problem was that the result WAS printed to the screen, but: NONE of the replacements were made. I tried replacing other things, including other words and even the letter "a". Throughout all of this, no changes.

If I could figure out why ereg_replace wasn't working, I'd be VERY close to being done.

Anon

My suspicion is that "readfile()" is actually assigning a pointer to $ArticlesIndex rather than copying the contents into a variable.

Use an fopen() with an fread() on the file, then use your ereg_replace().

-- Rich --

Anon

Well, thanks to your advice, the replacing now works perfectly. The problem is now saving the file.

Here's my code:

<?php

chdir("articles");
$ArticlesIndex = fopen("testindex.html", "r+");
$IndexContents = fread( $ArticlesIndex, filesize( "testindex.html" ) );

$IndexContents = ereg_replace("", "<p>Test Test Test</p> ", $IndexContents);

fputs($ArticlesIndex, $IndexContents);
fclose( $ArticlesIndex );
PRINT("$IndexContents");
?>

Originally, I didn't have the fputs. That way it would display the changes when it PRINTed it for me, but they wouldn't stay in the file.

When I added the fputs, it saves the changes to the file, but instead of overwriting the entire thing, it APPENDS it, so I get two testindex.htmls in one.

How do I get around this? The simplest way would seem to be overwriting the file, but I'm not sure how to do that.

Thanks,
Cass

Anon

the problem is your opening the file using "r+" and then trying to write to it. You need to open it as "w" if you want to write ot it. not sure if you can open a file to read and write to, but if not just close the file before you want to write and then open again using the "W" property.

Anon

If you open the file with "w+" then when you use fputs() it will replace the contents of the file. Just be sure that if you open() the file with "w+" that you do write something back out otherwise you will end up with an empty file.

-- rich --

Anon

Here's my problem: I'm doing the same exact thing as above, except instead of saving the changes to the same file, I'm saving them to a new file in a new directory (the save works, no problem there).
My problem: ereg_replace won't replace anything from my $myfile_contents variable. Here's the code as it stands on 26.07.2000

<?php
$myfile = fopen("index.php3", "r+");
$myfile_contents = fread( $myfile, filesize( "index.php3" ) );

$indexContents = ereg_replace("{left_content}", "test test test", $myfile_contents);
$leftNav = ereg_replace("{search-tab}", "test test test", $myfile_contents);
$leftNav = ereg_replace("{bestbets-tab}", "test test test", $myfile_contents);
$leftNav = ereg_replace("{movies-tab}", "test test test", $myfile_contents);

$newfile = "../gulfcoasting-final/index.html";
$myhandle = fopen($newfile, "w") or die ("cannot open $newfile for writing!");
fwrite($myhandle, $myfile_contents) or die ("cannot write to $newfile!");
fclose($myhandle);
echo("<a href='../gulfcoasting-final/index.html'>index.html</a>");
?>

Any suggestions? It looks good to me, just when you preview the output file (../gulfcoasting-final/index.html) you still see {section-tab} 's all over the place!
This also happens if I change {blah-tab} to  or even !!BLAH!!

Anon

Your problem is an error so simple you probably overlooked it (I do this alot).

The results of your "ereg_replace()" are in your $leftNav variable, but you are writing the original $myfile_contents out to your new file. Write $leftNav out to your new file and you will be fine.

-- Rich Rijnders
-- Irvine, CA US

Anon

Thanks a lot, this really helped me. I had the same problem as Cassius. It's all good now, though...