PHP5 Varying Include?

The_Silent

My host upgraded from PHP4 to PHP5 and the include code I was using doesn't seem to work anymore. It's fairly basic:

<? if ($tare=="") {$tare="news/news.php";}?><?php include ("$tare"); ?>

Now it will include the news/news.php page, but when I try to change it via a link, it doesn't work [link format: ?tare=page.php]. I'm wondering if anyone would happen to know of a new code I can use to have the varying include. I'm using it on multiple sites, but the main one is: http://add.ketsukaiten.net/

planetsim

try using $_GET['tare'] instead of $tare

The_Silent

Where would I use $_GET['tare']? In the code or in the links?

planetsim

Well I personally would do what you have like this

<?php
if (empty($_GET['tare']))
{
    $tare = "news/news.php";
}
?>
<?php
include ("$tare"); 
?>

You should also do a bit of checking whether the file your about to use exists.

The_Silent

Oh, the files exist all right ... well I tried that code on one of my simpler sites, a blog. It gave me this error when I tried clicking on a link:

Warning: main(): Failed opening '' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/ketsuka/public_html/dropbox/index.php on line 175

Line 175:
include ("$tare");

The_Silent

Oh, I just realized that you may think I'm using different pages in a PHP script - which wouldn't be the case. I'm relatively new to PHP so I don't know exactly what you're having me use so ... anyway, I'm just using it as a way to steamline the HTML code. One layout/index page, several content-only pages. It's including the content pages that isn't working right...

The_Silent

Would anyone happen to know how a code like this to pull content pages into the index/layout file through a ?var=page.php link?

andrewtayloruk

Hi,

It's not the best way to do this, someone can pass in /etc/passwd or whatever to your script and there is a chance your PHP will try and include it.

It would be better work like this example -


<?php

$content = '';
$page_id = $_GET['page_id'];

switch($page_id) {

 case '1':
   $content = 'Page 1 content';
   break;

 case '2':
   $content = 'Page 2 content';
   break;

 default:
   $content = ' This will appear if no page id is given';

}

?>
<html>
<head>
<title>Your test</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php echo $content; ?>
</body>
</html>

Obviously this example illustrates a better way of doing things, however, in the real world it would be impractical do this as your PHP file would become unwieldly as soon as you add more than a couple of lines per page or more than a couple of pages at all. However, you have the basic structure, from here you can start using require() with output buffering or start using fread() etc to bring in your content from other files.

HTH

Andrew

The_Silent

Hmm ... I don't have sufficient knowledge on the subject yet to write something on my own. I have several sites that need the code, one of which has over 500 pages of content. As you may guess, this one won't work. I'll use my simplest page as an example:

Code from main.php which loads in the iframe at www.ketsukaiten.net/index2.php:

<html>
<head>
<title>// Ketsu Kaiten --- Mourn the Loss //</title>
<style type="text/css">
body {scrollbar-track-color: #000000; scrollbar-arrow-color: #ff0000; scrollbar-face-color: #000000; scrollbar-highlight-color: #000000; scrollbar-shadow-color: #000000; scrollbar-3dlight-color: #000000; scrollbar-darkshadow-color: #000000; background-image: url(images/layout/contentbg.jpg); background-attachment: fixed; background-repeat: no-repeat; font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial; font-size: 10; color: #cc0000}
a:link {font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial; font-size: 10; color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none}
a:visited {font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial; font-size: 10; color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none}
a:active {font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial; font-size: 10; color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none}
a:hover {font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial; font-size: 10; color: #ff0000; text-decoration: none}
.newscell {font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial; font-size: 10; color: #ff0000}
.contentcell {font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial; font-size: 10; color: #ff0000}
</style>
</head>
<body leftmargin="4" rightmargin="4" topmargin="4" bottommargin="4">

<? if ($tare=="") {$tare="news/news.php";}?><?php include ("$tare"); ?>

</body>
</html>

Sample link:

<a href="main.php?tare=news/news.php" onmouseover="self.status='.News/Updates'; return true" onmouseout="self.status=''; return true" target="main"><img src="images/layout/bnews.jpg" border="0"></a>

All the content pages are in the following format:

<html>
<body>

content here

</body>
</html>

I just need a way to change the content in the layout shell. Load different pages. Let's see if I can find a working example ... here . That is using the code I used to use. It worked on the PHP4 platform but the part where it defines the variable through a link doesn't seem to work anymore. Would anyone know why that is and/or how to fix it?

onedingo

Using the following will compensate for the changes php5 makes to Globals.

$tare = $GET['tare']; // makes $tare available from $get[] array

$tare = HTMLSpecialChars($tare); // Good cautionary measure

if (empty($tare)){
$tare = "some_default_value"; // I usually use 'index'
}

Now you will definately want to change the way you include() your files as andrewtayloruk points out.

Let's modify your preceding link code to the following:

First you need to add/adapt the code at the top of this reply to your main.php file.

Now you need to find a place to put all your content includes. I usually put them in a location such as:

$_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "../inc/"

Which prevents them from being directly accessed. However, some webhosts don't allow user files above their given webroot so my alternative method is to give any include a ".htinc" filename. Apache (and probably others) does not send files matching ".ht*" to a browser. (which is the reason you can't access www.server.com/.htaccess in a browser).

When you decide what route you will take regarding include locations, the following code should get you started:

if (!(file_exists($SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "../inc/" . $tare . ".inc"))) $tare = "index";
include($SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "../inc/" . $tare . ".inc");

You will probably want to error check my code as I wrote it in a hurry.

R. Bowers

onedingo

Whoops!

Scratch that .ht method above.

If it worked that way index.htm would not be sent.

I said I wrote it in a hurry didn't I...

R. Bowers

andrewtayloruk

Hi,

Just another note of warning, I know embarassingly little about security and hacking, however, I've just managed to get a list of users on your system (the link you provided as an example) as well as their encrypted password. I did this in a couple of seconds. I'm sure someone who knew what they were doing could do a LOT worse.

PM me using your username from this board if me if you want the way I did it as an example. I will not give this example to anyone else.

The only reason I'm interested in stuff like this is because I've inherited a lot of code recently and i've been trying to find holes in it. I'm not a hacker/cracker!!!

Andrew

andrewtayloruk

Hi,

PM me using your username from this board if me if you want the way I did it as an example. I will not give this example to anyone else.

The only reason I'm interested in stuff like this is because I've inherited a lot of code recently and i've been trying to find holes in it. I'm not a hacker/cracker!!!

Andrew

The_Silent

Hmm ... onedingo ... I kind of get what you're saying as far as switching it to arrays ... but I don't understand what arrays will do. Hmm ... maybe I'm just ignorant, but it doesn't seem anybody is exactly giving the type of system I need. Well. Let's take one last attempt at describing it.

A contentional website consists of several .html pages, correct? Some basic ones in the main directory, and some more specific ones in subfolders. They all have the complete layout coded in every file. I used to use SSI code with a top.txt and bottom.txt file to make changing the layout simpler. Every one of the content pages had:

(top.txt)
Content
(bottom.txt)

All SSI'd that is. I then converted the site to what I had before my host upgraded the PHP. I would have the layout file. Where the content would load in the page I would have the include file. When you accessed the index2.php file [the layout, index.php was the enter page], it would load the default page in in the content section - which just so happened to be new/news.php. By clicking a link to go to a different file, it defined $tare ["who" in japanese if anyone was wondering throughout the course of this thread] as one of the content pages. It then grabbed that content file from whatever directory it was in in the server and included the whole thing where the content was supposed to be. What I discovered at one point was that this let me use multiple layouts, giving users a choice of how they wanted to view the website ... using a little CSS of course. If you want to see the main site I use it at in order to get a better picture of what's going on, go here.

I hope that made some sort of sense. Like I said, the original code I was using can be seen in action at the link I posted before. That site is actually the site I got the code off of. It's the same basic code that's used at practically all anime/gaming fan sites these days...

onedingo

But arrays are the only way you will be able to get it working in PHP5 (or more accurately, any PHP with register_globals = Off set in php.ini)

I recommend the following to get a better understanding of what has been changed:

Let us know if it still doesn't work.

R. Bowers

The_Silent

Okay ... I think I get what you're saying now. So. Trying to put a couple brain cells together here ... I'm thinking that since I have it in multiple layouts, the easiest thing to do would be to create the array in a file and then simply use an include in each layout file. So I'd define each page as one item in the array. So say:

$tare = array (
"news" => news/news.php,
"staff" => staff.php,
"contact" => contact.php
)

...and so on in the array file. Then I could change the page with a link like a href="?tare=staff" or a href="?tare=contact"? Now, granted that's probably not the cleanest array, or maybe not even the right kind. Would it be better to use one like:

$tare["news"] = news.php;
$tare["staff"] = staff.php;
$contact["contact"] = contact.php;

Anyway, then the code I'd place in the layout page would ... okay I'm not exactly sure how to do that. Remember, I'm new to this. Haven't gotten past chapter ... 3 of this beginning PHP book so yeah.

Oh, thanks for all your help everyone. Even if it a lot of it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, it's the effort that counts. Yes. I'll be cheesy like that. If someone like me came in and started asking things without explaining anything or knowing anything, I'd get annoyed and turn tail. I'll stop rambling now...

So the main include code...

onedingo

I never tried that but I guess it would work. VARY wasteful as the entire array would be imported on each page access though (server side).

The way I described takes the value stored in $tare and concatenates it between the file path and extension.

$tare = "some_page"; // you would actually get this from $_GET['tare'] somewhere at the beginning of your code
$path = $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "/inc/" . $tare . ".inc";
include $path;

Would result in an actual path like this:
/usr/home/htdocs/inc/some_page.inc
(The actual path generated will vary on different hosts but I can't check yours from here.)

And this from a browser:
/inc/some_page.inc

Then just name all your included content (somefilename).inc and link to them using <a href = "main.php?tare=(somefilename)">

Something to note:
.inc files are not by default parsed by Apache (just rename them to .php and adjust your include() code accordingly) I just do mine that way as I can change apache directives to parse them.

The_Silent

So wait, that way do I not even need to make an array with all the options?

EDIT

Oh, disregard the first part. I think I get it now. I'll go try it on one my simplest site and see how it works...

The_Silent

Okay, I got a working code:

<?
include ($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "/" . "array.php");
$tare = $_GET['tare'];
$tare = HTMLSpecialChars($tare);
      if (empty($tare))
         { $tare = "news/news";}
$path = $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "/" . $tare . ".php";
include $path;
?>

I suppose for most of the sites, I could simply put the array in where the first include() code is, but on my main content site ... well. Every time I release a new layout, it's just that. I let the viewers choose between which one, so it's like a skin basically. Adding an array with something like 500 items in it ... to each file ... well it just wouldn't be practical. Then I'd have to update each of them every time I wanted to add a new file. It's just for the sake of easy updating...

Thanks to all of you, especially onedingo for the concatenation idea. I wouldn't have thought of anything like that...