OO web page generation problem

[Chemist]

Hello,

I'm running PHP 4.2 and apache 2.0.40 on RedHat 9.0

I have a class called Page that generates web pages using page-specific variables which are passed as attributes to an instance of the class Page. The attribute Content holds most of a particular page's content. Here's a little bit of the code flow

In page.php which is the script that is the class Page.

<?php 
class Page
{

[SNIP]

   // The main content of the page 
   var $Content;

[SNIP]

   // an accessor function for Content
   function setContent ($PageContent)
   {
      $this->Content = $PageContent;
   }

[SNIP]

   // This function displays the page 
   function displayPage()
   {

[SNIP]

   echo "\n \n \n <!-- BEGIN PAGE-SPECIFIC CONTENT --> \n" 
          ."<div id=\"content\"> \n \n";
   echo $this->Content;
   echo "\n \n</div> \n"
          ."<!-- END PAGE-SPECIFIC CONTENT --> \n \n \n";

[SNIP]

   }

[SNIP]

} // End of class page 
?>

In a particular web page I instantiate a new object and provide page-specific settings.

<?php
// call the class which generates the page
require ('page.php');

// create a new Page object
$currentPage = new Page();

[SNIP] 

// Page-specific settings 
$currentPage -> setContent('<p> A bunch of HTML</p>');

// Display the page
 $currentPage ->displayPage(); 
?>

The above works very well as long as $currentPage -> setContent ('') holds only HTML. However, I have not found a way to get PHP code inside $currentPage -> setContent ('') processed by the PHP module.

This doesn't work

 $currentPage -> setContent  ('<?php $bar ="foo"; echo "$bar"; ?>') 

It seems that I am missing something basic. Any ideas?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Chemist

[planetsim]

Have you tried creating another object that can use eval(); But it is going to depend if you want to display the PHP as Code on a Page viewable, or if it will be parsed and have different output

[Shrike]

Chuck the PHP code into another object and create a new instance at the relevant point. Smells like MVC to me 🙂

[Chemist]

Many thanks to Shrike and planetsim for replying to my post.

Since displayPage() generates the HTML header and navigation menus as well as the footer I voted against creating a new instance of Page.

I got the eval idea to work by writing a new function in the Page class. PHP code worked. However, dealing with all of the escaped quotes inside setContent() got to be annoying real fast.

Then I got the idea to break up displayPage()
into two functions. One that displays everything before page-specific content and one that displays every thing after page-specific content. Then I don't need setContent().

So in an actual web page :

<?php
// call the class which generates the page
require ('page.php');

// create a new Page object
$currentPage = new Page();

[SNIP] 

// Generate the header, nav menus, etc
$currentPage ->displayBeforeContent();
?>
<!-- Page-specific content -->
<p> HTML stuff </p>

<?php echo "php code goes here "; ?>

<p> More HTML if needed </p> 

<?php
// Generate the footer, etc.
$currentPage ->displayAfterContent();

.....

// End 
?>

Again, many thanks.
Chemist