Including the time...

Ulujain

I'm positive this is a FAQ and I've done some searching. The only problem is, what's been suggested in the PHP manual etc, doesn't quite work the way I'd like it to (or work it all).

My site uses javascript to display the current date (adjusted to my locale). What I'd like to do is do this is PHP (which my site is written in). I know I could do this as an SSI too, but why when PHP can do this and a lot more...

I have a file called time.php which has this in it:

 $today = getdate(); 
$month = $today['month']; 
$mday = $today['mday']; 
$year = $today['year']; 
echo "$month $mday, $year";

If I try to include it, I get a parse error stating it expects ' or ;

I've invoked it as include("time.php");
I've also tried include 'time.php'; and include('time.php');

Same result every time. I've looked up the syntax for include and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Will this mechanism actually insert the time in the page?

The manual also gave this construct as an example
echo date ("l dS of F Y h:i:s A");

If I insert that anywhere, it literally echo's date ("l dS of F Y h:i:s A");

Server info
Apache 1.3.27 on Linux
PHP 4.2.3

Thanks in advance

Sigh, I will conquer this language one day

cgraz

Your code looks fine to me. What happens if you don't include the date? Still get a parse error? May be in the surrounding lines, or PHP will also be counting any included lines. Don't forget to take that into account.

Cgraz

Ulujain

Well this is the original code that I wanted to replace the javascripting with PHP

// date stamp
	."<tr><td bgcolor=\"" . getColor("titlebg2") . "\" align=\"right\"><img src=\"/themes/Rhuknet2/images/pixel.gif\" width=\"1\" height=\"37\"></td>"
    ."<td bgcolor=\"" . getColor("titlebg2") . "\" align=\"right\">

//wanted to replace all this jscript with the include (time.php) thing

<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n\n"
    ."<!--   // Array ofmonth Names\n"
    ."var monthNames = new Array( \"January\",\"February\",\"March\",\"April\",\"May\",\"June\",\"July\",\"August\",\"September\",\"October\",\"November\",\"December\");\n"
    ."var now = new Date();\n"
    ."thisYear = now.getYear();\n"
    ."if(thisYear < 1900) {thisYear += 1900}; // corrections if Y2K display problem\n"
    ."document.write(monthNames[now.getMonth()] + \" \" + now.getDate() + \", \" + thisYear);\n"
    ."// -->\n\n"
    ."</script>

//everything between these two comments is where I put the include.

Like I wrote, I tried include 'time.php'; include("time.php"); and include('time.php'); Same story; parse error, expecting ' or ;

As an extra, since I'm going to be "evaluating" time.php, it's meant to be double quotes, right? i.e "time.php" or is this not an issue?

Once again, thanks in advance.

Ulujain

Ack, didn't think the tagging would make people scroll right. The file I'm editing is called theme.php and is available from http://www.rhuk.net and is in Rhuknet 2. It's a PostNuke theme file.

cschotch

Let me get this straight
1. the file that calls the include is a .php extension right?

in the time.php file is it in the <?php ;?> opening and closing braces for php?
I just ask cuz when I started I did that alot....yeap stupid me...

Ulujain

It sure is...in fact, you can see the output of time.php yourself
by looking here:
http://www.ulujain.org/time.php

All I need to do now is include it

cgraz

I know this doesn't answer you question regarding includes, but you can get the date in the same format as you have it now on time.php by using php

<?

$today = getdate(); 
$month = $today['month']; $mday = $today['mday']; 
$year = $today['year']; 
echo "$month $mday, $year";

?>

include("file.php"); always works for me. Your parse error is probably not in the include itself, but somewhere else.

// date stamp
    ."<tr><td bgcolor=\"" . getColor("titlebg2") . "\" align=\"right\"><img src=\"/themes/Rhuknet2/images/pixel.gif\" width=\"1\" height=\"37\"></td>"
    ."<td bgcolor=\"" . getColor("titlebg2") . "\" align=\"right\">

You use a lot of concatenating and a escape a lot of quotes. Harder to find parse errors this way. I suggest you don't escape quotes, but rather use single quotes within double quotes. Also, instead of osmething like

echo "this " . $var . " then do this " . "then"
. "that" . $then . "more code here"
. "continue process";

Why not do

echo "this " . $var . " then do this " . "then";
echo "that" . $then . "more code here";
echo "continue process";

Don't have so many lines, try to chop it up into pieces. This will help you discover your parse error and by not concatenating lines, you'll reduce the chances of parse errors in my opinion.

And ofcourse

<img src=\"/themes/Rhuknet2/images/pixel.gif\" width=\"1\" height=\"37\">

Could be changed to

<img src='/themes/Rhuknet2/images/pixel.gif' width='1' height='37'>

// or even

<img src=/themes/Rhuknet2/images/pixel.gif width=1 height=37>

Cgraz

Ulujain

You're right cgraz, it's probably in the code surrounding it. I'm a little puzzled as to why the original author of this code just didn't invoke his CSS and URL's the old-fashioned way. All those lines separated by periods threw me for a loop as well. Thanks for the pointers re: concatenation and quoting. Definitely learned something there.

One thing I am curious about though; with PHP's ability to basically do anything a server-side include can do (or most javascript), why do people still use javascript or SSI in the middle of a PHP script to include a current date/time? Definitely doesn't look any easier to write and he had to list all those days in an array.

It's got me beat.

Twist

I am not sure why people would use javascript over PHP for some things (like the time stamps) but in some places javascript is still useful. Like when you want to have a button to add something to a forms textarea. Javascript can do that without reloading the page.

But as for the time.php thing that you first asked about the problem is that you have some invisible characters in there instead of spaces. I have no idea where these are coming from. Are you using a Word Processor to edit the PHP in or something? Or prehaps you have a remapped keyboard layout that is causing it to use something beside the space character for spaces. When I view the invisible character it looks like a bullet •.

And to help out a little more this will get you the same output as the code you are using in time.php only in fewer lines:

<?php
echo date("F j, Y");
?>

Ulujain

As far as editing goes, I use Crimson Editor. I know not to use word processors to edit code such as PHP.

The main reason I'm trying to avoid javascript is that it can be disabled. There's a lot of pages out there where the author didn't count on a visitor viewing it with scripting disabled (or non-existent in the case of lynx) and seeing blank lines or "undefined"'s instead of what the author intended looks a little odd.