Is this possible?

schreck00

Is it possible to pass just a single variable using include(); instead of just passing an entire file? If not, is there a simple way to pass a single variable to another php file? What I'm trying to do is base the background image on one page off the color of another, but I don't want to execute the code from the other. I need to pass the background color variable from the one page to the other. Is there an easier way to accomplish what I want to do?

laserlight

Perhaps you should be looking along the lines of a configuration file, or even a database?

schreck00

I'm not sure that will do the trick because the background of my one page let's say (page1.php) changes with the output, and now (page1.php) is displayed inside of an inline frame on (page2.php) and that background image is based off of the color on (page1.php).

Rodney_H_

What if you removed the background image from page1.php entirely and put that value in an external style sheet and save the style sheet as "bg_image.css" like so:

/* define background image properties here */
body {
	background-image: url(images/image.gif);
	}

Then include that style sheet to the pages wherever you need it in between the head tags like so:

<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="bg_image.css">
</head>

schreck00

A stylesheet is too static. My website background needs to be dynamic.

laserlight

What mechanism is used to determine the background change?

schreck00

I have prayer.php which determines the prayer for the week, or maybe if it's a special day it will be that day. Depending on the prayer the backgroudn of prayer.php changes. Now, on my home.php the background is an image which I would like to change according to how the background of prayer.php changes.

Rodney_H_

It is kind of hard to give you the code without knowing your directory structure, how you determine what prayer is to be shown and how the images relate in terms of naming structure. Is there a one - to - one relationship, for example is there something like this in your system:

prayer1 : prayer1.gif
prayer2 : prayer2.gif
prayer3 : prayer3.gif
prayer etc..................

At any rate, it would be helpful to see the code you are using, etc... but I think you can get my drift here:

<?php
// get prayer variable
$prayer = /* however you determine this value from "prayer.php" */;
// image definition
$image = $prayer;
// if you need to add a directory or image type do that here
// you can use an absolute path if you want to use this in 
// more than one website and images are not local
$image = "http://www.yoursite.com/images/directory/" . $image . ".gif"; // or .jpg
// once you have that established use that value as a CSS definition for
// the background image like this
echo "<style type=\"text/css\">
body {
	background: transparent url($image) no-repeat left top;
	}
</style>";
?>

However you get the $prayer variable value is really the key here, but the cool thing is with this code, you can change the background of the page whenever the value of "$prayer" this changes

schreck00

If looking at my code would help goto http://aaronfenker.net/home.phps and http://aaronfenker.net/prayer.phps. Excuse the possible bad coding technique I'm still learning and home was quickly converted from HTML.

Rodney_H_

Thanks for posting the files. I took a look and am a little out of my element here, as I, too, am just a noobie :-)

However, the simplest thing that comes to mind, as I am just learning this, is doing as Laser Light has suggested, and setting up a database for your prayers.

It is easy enough to create the database and tables as well as to query them for the required info, in this case a prayer, what type of prayer, and it's corresponding bg_imge. You could have a table set up in the database, and each prayer would have a corresponding bg_image. You could stipulate what kind of prayer it is..

prayers_table
id: int,key, auto_increment
prayer: long_text
bg_image: var_char, 255
holiday: enum ('sunday','easter','christmas','etc') default/sunday

Then, you could do an query for the prayer and bg image or just the bg image. The benefit of doing it this way is that you could put the data in the db rather than having all the prayers on one file.

I would be happy to recommend some information if this sounds like something you would like to pursue.............. However, if you don't want to do that, then, with access to the files, re-explain your request specifically: Which variable from which file do you want to pass to where?