includes

StickeR

Hi,

I'm working on a site, in PHp, and since there are quite some (long code) scripts we diceded to do them in seperate php files and then use the include function to get them in our main index file.

here's my question:
Is this bad or something in any way, does it 'hurt' the page to have several includes in one page?

my appologies if this is a dumb issue, but Im new to php and especially to the use of includes.
(my history is html and frames)

Huuggee

personally, i think includes are great.

I tend to write sites divided into many files, so i can keep certain functions together. (i haven't mastered oop yet)
then i have one file that loads all my included function files.

Therefore i need only load one file in all my main files. (are you keeping up?)

I'm not sure whether this has many overheads, i guess they are minimal but would depend on the size of the site and th includes

StickeR

Originally posted by Huuggee

Therefore i need only load one file in all my main files. (are you keeping up?)

half...

Correct me if im wrong:
Youre including several 'pages' into one, and then including that one page in another (the 'main' page)?

Plus I forgot some of the includes have their own database connection, does that matter?

Huuggee

yes, that's right.

You should be okay to have multiple DB connections, as long as they all take different names, otherwise you will start overwriting them.

The reason i have multiple files is so that i can use different files for different things.
eg. only one file would open the database connection. Unless using multiple databases, there is no need to open the connection more than one, and leave it open on a persistent connection.
Another file, for example might hold all my htm output, or handle GPC's

Roger_Ramjet

With a database connection script I use the require_once statement rather than include. Have a read of require , require once , and follow the links to include() and include_once() to see the differences.

As Huugee has pointed out, you can nest included files so that production pages only need the one statment - saves lots of typing, and debugging because you forgot a functions file etc.