why doesn't <?php echo "hi";?> work in an html page

DaveR

I have tryed to get this simple script
<?php echo"hi"; ?>
that is placed in a normal test.html page to work
but with no luck
html page below
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title> New Document </title>
<meta name="Generator" content="EditPlus">
<meta name="Author" content="">
<meta name="Keywords" content="">
<meta name="Description" content="">
</head>

<body>
start<br>
<?php echo "hi"; ?>
<br>
end<br>

</body>
</html>

when the page is ran I would think I would get the result of
start
hi
end

but I always get
start

end

yet if I rename the page to test.php it will work.

why can't it detect the php inside the html when ran as a html page?

DaveR

mahers

Because your webserver is told to only process files as php whose extension is .php. It thinks that the html file doesn't contain any PHP code as its extension is .html

diego25

In other words, change the filename to test.php

Diego

DaveR

Thank you mahers :-)

that sent me on the right track!

I now have it working

DaveR

showman

DaveR,

There is another solution, if you are like me and just like using the .html extension..

If you have .htaccess file use available to you then you can add this to the beginning of the file and upload it, then your server will parse htm html and php files for php code.

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .php .htm
AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null

Quite honestly the second and third lines, I'm not sure if they are necessary, but I've always included them, just in case... I'm sure someone here that knows alot more then I can tell you for sure.

If using .html as an extension is not an issue with you then you may not want to use this method, because I assume there is some sort of performance hit on your server based on parsing all html docs for php code, but I've never noticed a difference.

showman

DaveR

Showman

I liked what you came up with but is there a way to do the same thing on a windows server?
DaveR

showman

Sorry to say that I can't help you with that... never done anything in that environment.

doug

diego25

Go to
Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Services Manager

Right click on your website, go to Properties, go to Home Directory tab, click on Configuration, and you add it there.

Diego