Using PHP within CSS

VuurSnikkel

Hi there ppl...

I was wondering how to use PHP inside of a CSS-file. At first, I simply renamed the .css-file to a .css.php file (like PHPMyAdmin uses) and inside of this file (after tagging it with <?php ?> at the beginning and the end of course) I used some inline PHP (<?php echo $GET["sitecolor"] ?>) to enable the user to use the url to set the linkcolor (http://url?sitecolor=#rrggbb), but for some reason, the $GET-vars aren't being accepted and / or evaluated by the css-file. This might of course be due to the fact that this file has got different header information, but I'm not sure about that. Does anyone know about this problem and how to solve it? Thanks in advance.

GRTZ,

VS.

phpmaven

AFAIK, you can't. But why not just echo out references to different classes in your code depending on which url is clicked?

If ($url == "/test1.html") {
echo '<span class="bluetext">This text is blue</span>';
}
If ($url == "/test2.html") {
echo '<span class="greentext">This text is green</span>';
}

phpmaven

Weedpacket

Originally posted by VuurSnikkel
Hi there ppl...

I was wondering how to use PHP inside of a CSS-file. At first, I simply renamed the .css-file to a .css.php file (like PHPMyAdmin uses) and inside of this file (after tagging it with <?php ?> at the beginning and the end of course) I used some inline PHP (<?php echo $GET["sitecolor"] ?>) to enable the user to use the url to set the linkcolor (http://url?sitecolor=#rrggbb), but for some reason, the $GET-vars aren't being accepted and / or evaluated by the css-file. This might of course be due to the fact that this file has got different header information, but I'm not sure about that. Does anyone know about this problem and how to solve it? Thanks in advance.

GRTZ,

VS.

Without seeing some code it's a bit difficutl to tell where the problem might be. Certainly you can have

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css.php?sitecolor=3366ff" />

and have stylesheet.css.php be a PHP script that generates a stylesheet.

superwormy

To have a just plain .css file get parsed by PHP, you need to tell Apache to parse CSS as PHP content. You can do that in the line in your httpd.conf file that looks like this:

<IfModule mod_php4.c>
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
</IfModule>

Add:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .css

You may also be abel to use a .htaccess file to set this. A better solution might be to embed your CSS in your webpage with <style></style> tags...

Otherwise, POST CODE so we can see what doesn't work about your trial...

Weedpacket

Originally posted by superwormy
To have a just plain .css file get parsed by PHP, you need to tell Apache to parse CSS as PHP content. You can do that in the line in your httpd.conf file that looks like this:

Ah, but the example has a .php extension! Your suggestion improves the look of the URLs, but it's probably not the dealing with the problem.

Still can't go any further without seeing the relevant code. Knowing what it does do instead of what it should do would also help. We don't even know yet whether a Content-Type: text/css header is being sent or not.

superwormy

Yeah I realize that... thats why I said this:

To have a just plain .css file get parsed by PHP, you need to tell Apache to parse CSS as PHP content. You can do that in the line in your httpd.conf file that looks like this:

And told him to post code :-)

phpmaven

Well shut my mouth! I didn't know you could parse external css files as php. I just tried it and it works fine. I assumed it would have to be included for it to work.

My apologies for my ignorance.

Weedpacket

Remember also that # has a special meaning in URLs, so if you really do need to have it there you'll need to urlencode it as %35.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by phpmaven
Well shut my mouth! I didn't know you could parse external css files as php. I just tried it and it works fine. I assumed it would have to be included for it to work.

Oh yeah! CSS is just text like anything else; perfect for something like PHP to generate - not like some weird proprietary binary format.

My apologies for my ignorance.

No need to apologise if it's not wilful:

To be ignorant of many things is expected.
To know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom.
To know of a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of learning.
To know the details of that category of things of which you were ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.

levinalex

Hi,

If you use php to generate a Stylesheet remember to set a Content-Type header of text/css or it will not be applied in some browsers.

<?php header('Content-Type: text/css'); ?>

$GET is not available in your Stylesheet because the Browser makes a seperate HTTP connection to get it.
You can work around that problem by appending the needed variables in your HTML-document like so:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css?color=<?php echo($_GET['color']); ?>" />

Hope that helped,
Levin