Help w/ simple template system

raisinlove

Hi, I'm currently building a templating system for a website composed of 5
sections. The whole website should be based on the same template, except for
5 different headers and 5 different submenu subtemplates.
The follwing code is what someone on Usenet (Jacob) has proposed so far. As
he probably assumed I knew more about PHP that I actually do, he left out
some details. First here's the script that generates all the pages:

<?php
$header = $section . "/header.php";
$body = $section . "/" . $content . ".txt";
$footer = $section . "/footer.php";

if (is_file($header) && is_file($body) && is_file($footer)) {
include($header);
include($body);
include($footer);
}
else if (is_file($header) && is_file($footer)) {
include($header);
include("somedefaultpage.php");
include($footer);
}
else {
print("File Not Found!");
}
?>

But as I wasn't sure what he intended for me to put in the header.php and
footer.php files, I figured that it should be generic code that:
1. Fetches the (header/footer) template. In my case I would like to link
this to a templates directory. File extension for these templates could be
.txt
2. Assign variables. In the templates I would have {$Title}, {$Submenu}, ...
tags. Here is where I would determine that {$Title}=
"./images/artistheader.gif" for example.

Also, how do I assign a path to where the script will fetch the content
files? In my case I dont want the actual content to be in each section
sub-directory. I would rather have all content in one directory called
"content".

Here's what a sample URL would look like to call these pages:
http://something.com/something.php?section=artists&content=artist5

Based on what has been proposed to me and what I need next, can you help?
Thanx!

-steph
www.raisinlove.com

dolce

well, that ain't hard, you know... first, make several files, one caontaining a header, another the footer and the actual bodies of the files... say you will name them header.php, footer.php and of course body1.php, body2.php, body3.php... et cetera...

in the body files you do the following ABOVE ALL THE HTML
<?
$title = "Title of this page";
$something = "something";
$somethingelse = "somethingelse";

include("header.php");
?>

in the header, you will have all the <body> <head> tags, maybe the CSS, maybe even the top part of the pages, since it may be the same everywhere...

in the body file, comes the design, and when it comes down to content, what you do is either include a text file, or an html file or in fact anyhitng you like... the include function will support any path to any file on the web... 🙂)

and at the bottom of the body file you will place something like this:

<?
include("bottom.php");
?>

in the bottom file you will close the the <BODY> and maybe some table tags... 🙂

dolphinsnot

Ahh...Templates. I think they are absolutely grooverrific.

First, I'd suggest you take a completely different approach from the messy 'include' system. Have a look at the following article:

http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/david20000512.php3

The templates.inc file in phplib is excellent for template schtuffs. It allows you to completely seperate your PHP code from you HTML source. In your main php file, you assign different parts of the page info to variables (for example, you could have $description = 'A description of some stuff' and then have $description dropped into your templates 'Description' MetaTag.), and then define how you refer to your variables in your template ("page_description",$description). The template engine grabs your template file, finds all occurrences of {page_description} (curly brackets are important here), and replaces it with whatever value $description is assigned.

I'm using templates to re-construct a website to be database driven. I have one template that it used for a thousand pages. The information for the 1000+ web pages that make up the site is subdivided into 6 database tables (about, links, news, etc.). My script grabs the table and page names from the URL and builds the proper page accordingly. a Database back-end is not necessary, but it's helpful. Instead of a thousand .html files, I now have 1 php script, 1 template, and 1 MySQL database.

I've even been using 'Cloaking' in the URL so that instead of:
http://something.com/something.php?section=artists&content=artist5
you would be able to type in:
http://something.com/something/artists/artist5.html
and get the same result.

I did this 'cause the site I'm working on is mainly used by old-school business people that aren't exactly computer-proficient. By maintaining the familiar looking URL that ends with what appears to be an .html file, I prevent some confusion and tech-support calls. It's also structured so that search engines will properly index everything.

Anyhow, read the article on templates and let me know if you need any help with it all!

-DolphinSnot

Anon

Yep, Templates are quite spiffy. As Dolce, the template system you've started with is just a simple file inclusion method, where your (html) include files are named in the $header, $body, $footer variables.

DolphinSnot's suggestion to consider moving to a more powerful template system worth considering. .

Perhaps the most commonly mentioned template system around here is FastTemplate, but there are oodles to choose from (including one I wrote myself: http://www.shoutingman.com/interests/web/index.html#template )

The basic idea is to have a template file, a content file, and a template-creation file.

The template file has the general page structure, but rather than having actual content (images, links, text), it has fill-in-the-blank markers, e.g. {BODY_CONTENT}, that indicate "The main body of the document goes here."

The content file, then, has the stuff fills in the blanks in the template file.

The content creation file is the PHP program that is the "template" code. It is the code that takes the template file, finds the markers, and replaces them with the content-file stuff.

With more powerful templates, you can have markers replaced with other templates which are filled-in; the content can be from pre-made files, are made on-the-fly from some other program, or taken from a database; and the template code might be a set of functions that act as a black box to the user, allowing him to just call the appropriate functions from with the program that puts it all together.

Your template system is just about the simplest form, and is a good way to get going quickly on a simple project. However, if the website grows in complexity, you may find it helpful to look at more full-featured template systems.

Anon

www.touradomain.com also uses a template system - database driven. Very quick, very efficient.

Using the database makes it very easy to updatem maintain, etc... currently over 1000 domains using it..

raisinlove

Hey thanks guys! Well I started with some really basi cstuff. Not the most optimal but at least I completely understand it and it serves my immediate needs. I plan on building on it however. I dont want to get into databases yet but they do seem to help tremendously when managing high volumes of content...