Embeded PHP (Counters)

vbtester

I have developed a counter system for my website. The counter has been implemented with a mySQL database as the backend, PHP as the middle tier and HTML as the front end. I have PHP code that access the database to get how many hits the counter has received.

My PHP code then outputs a Table that says “You are visitor #x”. This code works great if I call a PHP page like ShowCounter.php.

However, I would like to have an HTML page (ShowCounter.html) that can embed the results of ShowCounter.php inside of it.

Is it possible to have an HTML page call PHP and embed the results without having to re-direct to another page, or to a PHP page?

If anyone has successfully implemented this I would be very grateful for your incite.

NickB

You've got several options.

If your server supports SSI's you could just do

You could just have your pages as PHP pages & at the insert point do (say)

<?php include "ShowCounter.php"; ?>

Or if you want to make it complicated & have access to the .htaccess file you could have a PHP script that replaces a certain HTML comment with the relevent data, pass the template page in as a get variable & use the rewrite engne to rewrite the entered url to point at the script & pass the page as a variable.

vbtester

This all sounds good, but I am looking for a much simpler solution. I do not have access to the .httaccess file as you mentioned.

I am looking for a way that my HTML document can embed somethign from a PHP script.

Using something like EMBED or FORM tag or something like that.

Is this possible? I dont want to have to have all my pages be .php pages just so that they can have a counter on them. If there was just some way to get the $counterHits variable from the PHP page to my HTML page.....

Any other ideas?

Mordecai

Alter your server configuration to allow .html to be processed as .php. Inclusion or SSI are the only other ways. Well, unless your counter is an image, in which case, just use <img src="ShowCounter.php">.

vbtester

I am not too farmiliar with SSI. If my server allows SSI, I can ebed the results of a PHP script inside my HTML Page? If this is correct then how would I go about doing this?

I presume it would be something like this....

<HTML><HEAD>Widget</HEAD>
<BODY>
Include goes here some how
</BODY>
</HTML>

Is this correct? What is the syntax to use SSI?

Thank-you all for your help!

vbtester

Maybe someone else has a solution to this problem. Is there a better way to display a counter when using mySQL to keep track of the counter hits?

My thought was its best to use PHP, but I have a problem when I want to display the counter. If I want to display the counter I am forced to have the display page as a PHP page, but I would like to display the counter on an ordaniary HTML page....

Any suggestions?

Daggeth

You crazy crazy complicated people!

lol, use Iframes! They are now supported by 90% of the browsers. Theyre cool if you dont have SSI and stuff...

vbtester

This sounds very interesting.... Please provide me more information about IFrames, like code of how to use them.

Thanks for your reply.

daphreeek

Heres a good tutorial on Inline Frames:
http://htmlgoodies.com/tutors/inlineframes.html

Another way is to generate images on the fly (like for geocities counters - only cooler lookin). Heres a tutorial I found using google - dont know how good they are - have a look around:
http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/counter.php

NOTE: The second method requires the GD mod compiled into PHP. To find if your server has this, use phpinfo();

Hope that helps
- Matt

vbtester

The last two posts where exactly the type of solution I was looking for.
Thank-you to eveyone who responded in this thread.

If any other suggestiongs come to mind please do not hesitate to let me know.

Thank-you all!

vbtester

The IFRAME (Inline Frame) Solution was brilliant!
I had never even heard of them, but they solved
my problem. Very simple yet effective solution.

Here is the code I used for anyone who is interested.

<HTML>
  <HEAD></HEAD>
  <BODY>
     <P>This is the main part of the page</P>
     <IFRAME ALIGN="CENTER" MARGINHEIGHT="0" HEIGHT="7%" 
                   WIDTH="100%" FRAMEBORDER="0"
                   SCROLLING="NO" 
                   SRC="http://www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/counter.php?show=1" NAME="cntr">
     </IFRAME>
  </BODY>
</HTML>

Thank-you all for your posts.