usines tables and the include function

csxpcm

hello everyone,
I was just after some general coding advice on how to implement the following. I was thinking of formatting my website using a standard table with the header and left hand navigation the same on all pages. The main section on each page should then contain the content.

################ index.php ################

the header (always the same)

#######################################

I was then thinking of passing a variable to the index.php page which would specify the inclusion of standard 'txt' file.

http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?context=-file.txt

So my question is...
Is this a good way to do what I want? Can anyone suggest alternatives or a more standardised method of doing this?

Thnakyou in advance
kind regards
- Peter

raymie

including a file as specified by a paramater is a very large security risk unless you validate the content against a set of allowed values.

Are you sure that you need to do this?.

Normally a page would simply be structured similar to the following

require_once('header.php')
... page specific code ...
require_once('footer.php')

csxpcm

hello
thanks for the reply. I considered the method in the reply. But this way each page has to have the page content of the file to be coded in each and every file.

for instance,
require_once(file.txt')

with my method, with the file specified as a parameter, only 1 template file is required, made up as a table. and the page specific code is supplied as required in the parameter. But i realise the security implications.

This led me to looking at other sites. For instance,

http://www.pcplus.co.uk/reviews/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=10898454&subsectionid=372&subsubsectionid=42765765

With this url, i changed the articleid parameter to a number that doesnt exist. I then get the added benefit of what i want with the reduced security risk of of not having to send the filename as a parameter. Somehow, the id is mapped to an actual filename I guess? or would this use a database of articles?
I really need some advice on how the more professional websites create an easy to maintain, well presented pages. any suggestions are always well appreciated

Thanks in advance
kind regards
peter

raymie

No matter which way you do the site you are still going to have to code specific pages even if the code is in a database rather than a file.

but....

You may want to look at the location directive in apache, with that you can tell apache to direct all page requests for a domain to a specific page rather than the requested one. You can then take the request information and build the pages content dynamically from included files or from database tables etc.

Have a look at http://phpfaq.info/ and select some of the questions there, you will need that all seem to link to pages in the format http://phpfaq.info/local/nn.

On this site these pages or directories do not actually exist but the requets are routed via a php file which outputs the dynamic content.

Perhaps that is more what you need.

This site works via the apache conf file, but it may also be possible to emulate this via a custom 404 page as setup via an htaccess file if you do not have control of the apache settings (or are using a non apache web server).