creating a "static" page with php?

vaska

generally, since i'm not the most skilled code person, i need to find the terminology to describe what i want to do - then i can research the techniques at php.net or in this forum...

what i want to do is create "static" html pages via a php output...meaning...i want a user to input information in to the database via some forms, including the name of the html page they want and or even the directory it should go to...then when they submit/publish the page...it will automatically create the page for them in static html (or some kind of static web page)...which can of course be updated using the same process later...

now, i have no idea where to begin with this...anybody know of any tutorials and/or things i might research for this?

thanks...jv

feldon23

This is a common request.

At first, it seems that the best way to use PHP is to allow moderators/administrators to the site to go in and make changes to certain things without messing up the style/display but the actual site is HTML. You can certainly do this.

Just look into the file reading and writing commands.

I think the heredoc syntax will be perfect for this if you choose to go that route. You need to set all your variables like $nameofsite and $newsarticle1 before the heredoc.

$htmlbuff=<<<QQQ
<html>
<title><head>{$nameofsite}</head></title>
<body bgcolor=FFFFFF text=000000 link=FFFF00>
<h1>Welcome to so-and-so.</h1>
The news for the day is:
{$newsarticle1}
{$newsarticle2}
{$newsarticle3}
</body>
</html>
QQQ;

echo $htmlbuff;

But, I would reconsider having the entire site PHP.

Angus

Id recommend you use fwrite.

See: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fwrite.php

$handle = fopen($filename, 'a');
fwrite($handle, $somecontent);
fclose($handle);

All you do in the $somecontent area is use the information from your form to fill in the blanks...

$handle = fopen($filename, 'a');
fwrite($handle, 

"<HTML>
 <HEAD>
 <TITLE>".$title." for webpage</TITLE>
 <HEAD>
 <BODY>
 Some other text might go here that includes a varuable like ".$content." etc...
 </BODY>
 </HTML>
"
);
fclose($handle);

Just be careful opening and closing your " " s

ednark

a good mix of the two techniques described already is to use ouput buffering...

you turn output buffereing on via [man]ob_start/man

then just print you php and html normal, only it doesn't go straight to the user, it gets put in the buffer for you

then you stop the buffer at the normal end of your file...

open up your .html file with [man]fopen/man
write the buffer to the file with [man]fwrite/man
close the file with [man]fclose/man

vaska

sorry if other people have asked about this...i should have been more diligent about searching...

i will note here that i find the search utility for this website a little askew...sometimes it doesn't give me the results i should get...i've tested with some of my old posts and i can't find them...

but this is no excuse...

thanks very much for this information...it gives me enough information now to go out and get in over my head with code stuff...i can't wait to tackle this one!

ednark

if you have the time, post back your final code so other people searching can figure out how you solved it [and me too]