[Resolved] php site becoming dynamic

fr8

Ive been able to get pretty far since my last post in the development of our new site.

My current problem is making the site "dynamic"?

I want to pull my data from mysql. I know how to do this but how can i make this dynamic?

Say one of our users comes to our site. He is greated with our home page, the data is pulled from mysql. Now when he/she follows a link it brings him to a new page and it follows the same layout (template) and the user is then greated with the new content that was pulled from the database.

Im not sure how to do this. What I have so far is:
index.php
when this file is loaded it includes the header/navigation/content/sidebar/bottom files.
each file is seperate. they are static html files currently.

echomonkey

PHP can be thought of as createing templates.

A static html document might say at the top of the page

<h1>Welcome Kelly</h1>

Assumeing Kelly is a user, problem being everyone else sees Welcome Kelly too. You would prefer it to say Welcome then the corect username. So maybe you grab the username when they login, you have the username in a variable $user now instead of Welcome Kelly you can

<h1>Welcome <?=$user?></h1>

$user is substituted automaticaly to the corect username for whome is logged in. This is the idea behind dynamic.

Lets say for each user has a table in the database, and it stores the users prefernces, like maybe backgroundcolor = blue. You read this from the database into say a variable $bgcolor. Now your body tag can be dynamic:

Now acording to what the user spesified as their favorite background color, this comes from the databse table, it automaticaly is used.

fr8

Ok i understand what you are saying. But what I would like to do is have all the "content" data of the website pulled from the database. That way all i have is templates that dont realy have any "content" in them. Just areas where the content would go. The problem is that im not sure how to make this dynamic to where not only when new data is added the user will still be able to navigate to it.
A very very good example of what we are trying to create is phpnukes Content module. Im wanting to create something the same as it but with some some special features that i want to make specific to my site. but those are for later one. Now i just want to build something like the content module of phpnuke. But this is where im lost on how to go and build it.

echomonkey

I found a simple phpnuke example template, lets look at it:

Source: http://www.nuketutorials.com/template.htm

<?php 
if (!isset($mainfile)) { include("mainfile.php"); } 
include("header.php"); 
OpenTable(); 

include("phpnuke.htm"); 
CloseTable(); 
include("footer.php"); 
?>

My understanding is that you wish to make your own "phpnuke" type system. Without the use of phpnuke? This can be done but requires alot of enginuity on your part. Like any big project.

include as you problably are already aware, just takes the contents of such and such a file, and dumps it into the main file. So above three include files header.php, phpnuke.php, footer.php altogether make up the dynamic page.

if you make a change to any of these include files the change will apear on the page. Is this what you mean?

fr8

i want to create a page that lets me add content to the database. after it is added it will be able to be accessed by the website.

admin page:
sends data to database

index page:
pulls data from the database and organizes it by catagory.

catagory page:
once you choose a catagory you are taken here for a listing of what is in the catagory.

item page:
here you can view the info of the item/person/news/date

and threw all of this it uses the same template files to create the webpage. i hope i explained this one better.

clandestine555

basically, you make your templates, then include em all, make functions for each page, for instance index would pull the catagory listing (in the menu section of template), then in the body, it would list the catagory information (last news article or whatever). from there they could click the news article, say read_article.php?articleid=99393932, and display the menu on the left in the template space, and a new different function in the body that would get the info from the database?

i'm working on a shopping cart pretty much like that, then you have your admin section where you can edit catagories, colors, etc, all dynamic.

fr8

thats what im going for. now i just have to code it.

What are some of the functions that i should have?

clandestine555

i was looking over what you're wanting, looks like you're wanting a shopping cart. this might be a much bigger help to you if you look for a PDF or go get the book:

PHP/MySQL Application Web Development by Sams.

this has a full walk thru on creating that, and can be transposed to several different types of sites.

fr8

what im going for is not realy a shopping cart thought i guess if you look at the final outcome you could make it a shopping cart. but if you break it down the goal of my project is to create the content module in phpnuke.

werkkrew

Usually, when I want dynamic fields in html parsing php and mysql I will create small php includes that will query the database and spit it out formatted the way I want it to appear, pulling all of the data from the database on the fly...

The easiest way is...

Inside of any "html" file (It MUST have the extension .php even if you just do a save as and make it .php thats fine...

put an include <?php include 'content.php?where=main' ?>

<?php include 'content.php?where=sidetable' ?>

etc, etc

just make a file that pulls the data and spits it out nicely formatted in a table...the style sheet attached to the rest of the html will be applied and each time the page is visited or refreshed the query will be executed, hence generating your dynamic content

fr8

ok im trying to read threw the code on phpnukes content modules. I thought i would just use there code and change it so i t can run by itself and not need the rest of nuke but that has become a task that doesnt seem to have an end. Which has brought to finishing the thought of building it from the ground up.

I have the tables built already in mysql. now im left with is pulling the data. I know how to get the data and i understand the formatting of the data to an extent. But the problem im seeing is how to create some if/else statements.

Im connecting to the database and there are only two tables that im pulling my data from. The first is the content. the format of this is as follows:
TABLE name is "Content"
pid
cid
title
subtitle
active
page_header
text
page_footer
signature
date
counter

and the second table is:
TABLE name is "Categories"
cid
title
description

the idea is the create a statement that uses the "cid" part of the table to divide the content up in there categories. But im not sure how to write the if/else statement. Anyone know how to do this?

i think thats explained well if not tell me and ill try and fill more info for you.

echomonkey

Ive been makeing a discussion fourm for my site, useing a flat file database. The concept simular to what I think you want.

I have a content file, and my main forum index page gets its contents from this file. And each topic and thread have a unique thread id and forum id. Acording to the id determines which forum or which thread is displayed. It is not complete but because of its simplicity I think it would help you. Since im a newbie the code isnt realy that dificult to follow and enough of it works that I think you could get some examples from and could modify. Much much simpler then phpnuke.

Are you interesed and if so let me know and i can send you the files.

fr8

I would be much appreciative if you could do that echomonkey.

i could almost say excacly what i need to have happen in the code to make it run. but i fall in the trap of writing it to where it works like it should.

when i choose one of the catagories that it will show in the url

example

ww.sitename.com/view.php?main=content&category=1

if im right (could not be) then &category=1 in the code is a variable and will be set to one. this im clueless on how to do. its one of the big things that im stuck on.
i want it to build my catagorys dynamicly and when i choose one you can see it in the url and when you choose one of the sub pages in the category it would then display that categorys PID in the url.

example:

ww.sitename.com/view.php?main=content

this shows all the categorys. i then choose one of them with the category cid=3

ww.sitename.com/view.php?main=content&page=listcategorypages&cid=3

now i see the list of pages in that category
i now choose one of them with the pid=2

ww.sitename.com/view.php?main=content&page=&pa=showpage&pid=18

fr8

To complete this thread what i have done to make my site dynamic is use many of the suggestion made and finding some others.

all of my pages are pulled from my mysql database using the ids of the tables row. that and the addition of switches and each case having a different include i am able to make the entire site dynamic. Now comes time to make an admin section for it.