PHP site navigation

[Monkee]

Hi,
I noticed most sites use php to navigate around instead of normal html links.
Why is it better, how does it work and where can I get an easy script?
Thanks in advance

[ph8edsicness]

There's not really an easy script... it depends on how you have your site laid out (Frames, etc) and how you want the script to work. In most cases it's simply a switch case where the page link sends a variable to a php script such as content.php

Content.php would generally be set up like this:

_GET($id)

switch($id)
{
     case 1:include("url1"); break;
     case 2:include("url2"); break;
     default; break;
}

Repeat cases as necessary

And in the a href tag you would link to the script like this:

<a href="content.php?id=X>link</a>

where X=the id number used to reference which page will be called upon by content.php to deliver to the browser.

---

Example:

User Side:
content.php?id=1

Script Side:
case 1:include("home.html"); break;

This would send the page home.html to the browser window.

---

Sorry if that's a little confusing, but it's pretty self-explanatory after you use it a bit and get to understand the variables and how the coincide with the script.

[Monkee]

Thanks, but I still don't understand why it's better than normal html links, isn't it doing the same?

[cgraz]

well if you include the content into a template page, you save yourself a lot of editing time when it comes to making changes.

Lets say you notice something mis-spelled in your title.

instead of xyz company it says xyz copany

well, instead of having to go through each page of your site and change the title one by one (it's very likely that all of your pages have the same mistake, since once you make the basic layout, you copy and paste to make more pages), you could simply modify one file and update the entire site. Saves a lot of time.

Cgraz

[ph8edsicness]

Templates are great and the whole purpose of PHP is that it's server-side which means everything is executed on the server and is called upon by the server, thus being more efficient and increases user-bandwidth when viewing content on your pages.

[subkida]

Do you need to include content.php in the file your linking from?

[Norman_Graham]

Originally posted by Monkee
Thanks, but I still don't understand why it's better than normal html links, isn't it doing the same?

I agree that this can be hard to grasp. In the beginners' book that I read the topic wasn't covered at all - it was just assumed that it was bleedin' obvious to all but the most primitive life forms. However, I managed to get my little head round it a couple of weeks ago. Here's how: I'm working on a website with loads of text and not much else (it's about history, geography, local background etc.). I had a PHP-enhanced page for each topic (the texts are in a database, PHP pulls it out). But then I realised that whole series of pages are, in terms of layout, exactly the same, e.g. all the geography pages are the same. So it makes sense to have just one 'display' page for all the geography texts and then use query links to select the content, e.g.

<a href="geography_display.php?topic=political_boundaries">Political boundaries</a>

The code in the page geography.php picks up the variable $topic, using $_GET[$topic] if register globals is off, and then uses that variable to make decisions about what database content to display. So I now have one file, where I previously had 5-6 files. The trick was simply to realise that, to make query links, you just add a ? at the end of the file name and then write variable=value, separating multiple variables with an &. The automatic 'method' for this is GET, so you can pick it up using GET (or just $variable if register globals is on). Totally simple, not totally obvious and not explained in my book.

Best o luck

Norman