Avoiding already sent header crap

pinehead18

OK, new to programming of course. I have a site which uses alot of includes header re-directs and of course cookies. Yet, my problem is i seem to not know how to organize the code so i can avoid that problem. Out of all the articles i have seen i have never seen one about how to do this. Anybody care to help? Maby by helping me find an article or explaining to me?

Thank you

eoghain

Here is how I avoid this.

All of my php pages start with <?php as the first 5 characters and end with ?> as the last 2 characters. If there is even a space before or after these tags you can get the already send headers error.
All of my pages are scripted fully, this means that I don't ever close my <?php tag until the end of the page. Anything I want displayed to the user I personally send to them with [man]print/man,[man]echo/man,etc...
Separate my HTML from my logic by using templates or some other type of abstraction. This is very helpful since I'm not an HTML Designer, I'm a Programmer and I know nothing about what would look good on a web page. I also don't [man]include/man these HTML templates. I use code to transform them from there static version into the dynamic pages that I want to show.

By treating your php pages as if they are programs and not Web Pages you will be able to avoid issues like these. Making this distinction in you mind is the first step.

ahundiak

Add ob_start() to the very beginning of your script (before including any files).
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ob-start.php

pinehead18

Hey, how do you incorperate code you want to have like for the first part of your html on all your pages?

Thanks man, your really helping me out alot.

Anthony

dalecosp

<?php

##### ALL THE LOGIC GOES HERE

session_start();
setcookie();
$PageTitle='whatever';

//user auth routines

if (!$_SESSION['auth']) {
   header("Location: buzzoff.php");
}

// Receiving, cleaning, and checking variables...

$pagenumber=strip_tags(trim($_GET['pagenumber']));

// Calculating stuff ...

if (date('W')%2==0) {
   $week="It's black week again...";

//functions

function doNothing('') {
   while ($x<1000) {
    $x++;
   }
}

// And then, finally after all is said/done, // the output begins...

include 'header.html';