template for dynamic pages-problem

Anon

in the process of creating a site which will require pages to be generated on the fly. to do this I am trying to set up a template file that I can include in all the pages to set common header/footer details. problem is, I can't get it to work.

here is the script (using an article on this site as a guideline):

<?php
function site_header($title) {

echo "";
echo "<HEAD>";
echo "<TITLE>Product Reviews -'.$title.'</TITLE>";

//set up metatags
//take out "the", "and" and "a"
//a truly gifted developer would use
//a great Regular Expression here

$keywords=str_replace("the ",'',strtolower($title));
$keywords=str_replace("a ",'',$keywords);
$keywords=str_replace("and ",'',$keywords);
$keywords=str_replace("\"",'',$keywords);

//make the string comma-separated
$meta_array=explode(' ',$keywords);
$meta_words=implode($meta_array,', ');

echo "<META NAME=\"KEYWORDS\" CONTENT=\"PHP, '.$meta_words.'\">";
echo "<META NAME=\"DESCRIPTION\" CONTENT=\"Product Reviews, '.$title.'\">";

echo "</HEAD>";

echo "<BODY TEXT=\"#000099\" BGCOLOR=\"#FFFFFF\">";
}
print "this is just a test of this function";
function site_footer() {

//contains common html
//for the footer

echo "</BODY>";

}
?>

then in the use:
include('./shared.inc');

to include this file in my pages.

(this also doesn't work if I tweak it and embed within a page)

when this page is called from the form with $title passed in the only thing that shows up is the print contents in the middle (this is just a test of this function). If I remove the '$title' definition in site_header still nothing.

1) I can't find any reference to site_header or site_footer in the docs, am I missing it (likely)?

2) Since I can't find in the docs, I am not sure what is the correct syntax and what my expectations should be for the output. as of now, nothing shows in the source except the middle print line.

Any/all help is greatly appreciated.

/frank

Anon

What you have in your code right now is this:
You are declaring two functions site_header and site_footer. These are not PHP functions but ones that you are creating yourself. In your code you never actually call them so they won't print off anything. To active these functions you would need to add:

site_header("Your title here");
print "this is just a test of this function";
site_footer();

into your code or call them from somewhere else. I just tested it and it worked fine.

Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Multimedia

Anon

Judging from your provided source code and what you have said I can see a few problems... First of all, you won't find any reference for site_header or site_footer because those are functions that <B>you</B> have created with your above source code.. I recommend you research the "function" command a bit.. Second, the above code should be saved as shared.php or shared.php3 (Depending on your configuration) rather than shared.inc. To use the above snippet you should do something like this:

<?php
include('./shared.php');

site_header();

// Put your content here!

site_footer();
?>

Anon

that works great!! thanks for the explanation, makes sense now. the code creates the function (with 'function...') then I declare what it is, then I have to call that function back out in the actual page to print the results.

thanks trevor!!

/frank

Anon

thanks ted, have it working now along with a little more knowledge.

thanks,
/frank