Browser "View Source" question

cidesign

Hello;

I have a simple question. If I do a view source from the browser (IE) I should not be able to see the PhP code correct ?

However if I am sitting at and using the computer which contains the php files I am able to see the code using view source.

I havent as yet published the pages to the internet so I was just curious to see if viewing them in localhost was normal, since all the programming is done on the local pc before going live.

thank you

wilku

if you enter a local path to your browser (like c:\www\index.php) it won't be served by web server, meaning it won't be parsed by php. So you'll see the code. But if you enter http://localhost/index.php it should parse the file and the code shouldn't be visible. If it is, then you haven't configured web server with php correctly.

sempuritoza

the thing about server side languages is that one can never really view the code of the specific language - whether it be PHP, ASP, JSP etc... - all the compiling of the server side language is done on the server and the only thing that you will be able to see once you are running the page is the output of the script language.

this is one of the major benefits of using server side languages, the fact that you can hide your code and only display the output.

i hope this answers your question..

cidesign

Since the PhP functions and code I have written all work properly in the browser how can it be that something is not configured properly ?

I mean it does not display the PhP code.. but it does display the html tags I am echoing inside of the code.

example:

phpinfo(); //doesnt display in view source which is good

echo"<html>"; // this tag displays in view source which is undesirable.

I chose PhP for the server side feature of abstraction and would like to abstract visitors from all of the code..

thx,

bradgrafelman

echo"<html>"; // this tag displays in view source which is undesirable.

You echo'd it out to the browser. Of course it shows up in the source... it's supposed to.

What are you trying to say? You want your entire page to be loaded, and the "View source" to be nothing? The only way a browser knows what to display is by parsing the "source" of a page. How can you expect to output any HTML and not expect the browser to see it, yet still show the webpage???

thorpe

you cant hide the html source. it is sent to the client so the browser can display it.

if you didnt send it, there would be no page.

best you could do is some javascript trickory, but it is impossible to completely hide the html no matter what language generates it.

what does it matter? its not like html is a programming language.

cmdr_bond

Just wondering, if you use the php include or fopen functions, is it possible to view all the variables used by a php page?
I was thinking of running a loop to output all the variables but it only shows the one on the localpage and not the one being opened.

bradgrafelman

Take a look at this, it will show you every variable in the global scope:

var_dump($GLOBALS);

wilku

I've just been struck by an idea (stupid as it is). It would be possible to hide all the code (nearly), even html tags. You'd have to create an image large enough to contain everything on the page and instead of echoing everything, paint it on that image. Finally you'd send an image of a page.
I doubt if meta tags can be transmitted this way. And I'm sure the idea can be implemented, but it's not feasible. The problem would be to create sort of an html parser that would build a page on a server and take a snapshot of it to send to client. It would probably be a little on a slow side too.

bradgrafelman

A little? You'd have to use a compressable format, like JPEG, at a middle quality setting for it to be anywhere near dialup-user friendly.

EDIT: Not to mention the server load, processing time, etc.