Including one file in several others

Anon

Hi,

Im updating a site of mine and I have lots of pages. Currently all the pages have the menu part in them.

What I would like to do is to have one file with the menu stuff and then just use php in all the others to display the menu. That way I could keep the menu up to date alot easier.

But the problems is, I've never used php so I have no clue if it can be done or how.

-Miika

[deleted]

Read the MySQL manual about include() and require()

Anon

i usually have a createmenu() function in a mylib.inc file that's included in every script of the frontend.

it can also contain createheader() and createfooter() functions for all that <head>...<body><table>... stuff around the actual page display.

furthermore, i include some db abstraction functions there that make everyday work a lot easier.

cheesehead

The easiest way of doing it is to put this in the place that you want the menubar to be displayed:

<?php require "filename"; ?>

Then just put the html code for the menu bar in whatever 'filename' is.

Anon

I copy pasted that line into my page and changed the filename but nothing... 🙁

Anon

You need to make sure that the filename includes and relevant path from the file that it is in. Also make sure that the file extension is included (e.g. \"textfiles/textfile.txt\" ). It should have errored if it couldn\'t find the file though.

Before going any further are you sure of a few things:

That you are definately processing php file. Try and write a simple <?php print \"Hello World\"; ?> and call it something like test1.php. If that doesn\'t print hello world in the browser then php isn\'t set up properly.
Does your main page have a .php extension or a .html extension. Generally .html files won\'t get processed the php and so the command won\'t work.
Does the include file definately have data in it that will be visible. Try and include a simple text file with Hello World in it and see what output you get.

That\'s all I can think of for the moment. If it still isn\'t working try and explain in a bit greater detail what you are getting out and maybe post some of the code up.

Hope it helps.

kparker

But the problems is, I've never used php

Is that 'Never used PHP', or 'Never done any real programming'? If the former, then say what other languages you have used, as we might find an analogy that would help explain things quicker.

Anon

Ok...

I've managed to write the function, but I tested it on my friends server who is running php4, and it worked fine. When I moved it to a server running php3, didnt work.

Heres the code:

<?php function echofile($file)
{
$fh = fopen($file, "r");
while(!feof($fh))
{
$char = fgetc($fh);
echo $char;
}
fclose($fh);
}
?>

<?php echofile("menu.html"); ?>

What would make it so that it only works in php4, but not in php3?

Thanks,