Changing list content on hyperlink click.

nick_kirby

Hello,

What I want to do is probably quite simple, but I don't know where to start.

Basically, I want to have five, fixed (based upon the "sections" of my website set navigation bar at the top, and a navigation bar to individual articles within that section (subsections) on the left hand side.

Basically, if you're in, say waffle, the left hand menu then changes to show wafle1, 2 and 3, and if you're in comps,you could get to things like networks, services, and maps, for example.

However, I don't know how to "get" the left hand menu to change depending upon which section the user clicks on the top menu.

I can envisage that each would be given a number, so the code could look something like this:

if user clicks 1 //home
then show home_menu_list

If this is not a php thing, please let me know where I should start looking to find information about this topic.

Many thanks for your attention,

Nick

devinemke

pass the section via a GET variable from your navigation links:

<a href="index.php?page=networks">networks</a><br>
<a href="index.php?page=services">services</a><br>
<a href="index.php?page=maps">maps</a><br>
etc...

then use $_GET['page'] to display the correct content and correct navigation status.

nick_kirby

Apologies for being entirely thick - thank you, however how do I link that in to a list defined as a CSS class?

Is it possible to call pages as CSS lists?

nick_kirby

Sorry, I don't get it. Do you mean to include things such as multiple if statements or switch statements?

How do I include get, to, for example, when someone clicks on my home button, they get index.php, and all of it's content?

I have a feeling if I can crack this I can work out how to load the side navigation as well, as that changes based upon hyperlinks.

For a "what I mean" go here: www.niknet.homeip.net

Many thanks for your help,

Nick

devinemke

all the links on your site current point to "#" (a href="#"). my suggestion is to pass a GET variable on all of you links with the relavant page description (re-read my post above). then once the variable is passed you can use that to [man]include[/man] to appropriate content file (or pull it out of a database if that's where you are storing the content).

nick_kirby

Umm, ok, but how do I do that?

If I alter the hyperlink to point to

<a href="index.php?=writing.php">writing</a></li>

For example, how (and where) does the get statement go, and what sort of syntax ould it have?

nick_kirby

Sorry - I am trying. I realise such people are a pain. As soon as I put in the php tags <?php I get an error in the list on line 11, stating unexpected <.

I know such things are terminated with ;. Where does this go?

Many, many thanksf or your kind patience,

Nick

nick_kirby

Hello again. I included two statements of $_GET index and writings, however when writings is clicked, nothing happens. The variable is passed - the URL changes - but the page is not displayed.

What do I need above it to change this so that when an URL is clicked the right page is displayed?

LoganK

Section links:

<a href="page.php?p=network">Networking</a>
<a href="page.php?p=install">Installation</a>

"Left-hand" Menu:

<blah blah blah html code/css/whatever>
<?php
if ($_GET['p'] == "networking")
{
     echo "<a href='blah'>Sublink for networking #1</a>"; // First example link; the rest follow this format
     echo "Sublink for networking #2";
}
elseif ($_GET['p'] == "install")
{
     echo "Sublink for install #1";
     echo "Sublink for install #2";
}
// ... and so on and so forth, until
else
     echo "Invalid page!";
?>
</blah blah html code/css/whatever>

nick_kirby

Hello there, many thanks for the code, I sort of follow it.

At the moment the code returns Invalid page, which is expected as I guess it doesn't know where to find networking or install, so how do I reference these properly if mypages are called index.php (home), comps.php, writing.php and so on?

I want to pour the sublinks (the echo statements) into a CSS tag of #sidenav. How do I do this?

Many, many thanks,

Nick

nick_kirby

If it helps, what I am trying to (sort of) emulate is this effect:

http://www.tremada.com/V5/

but with the side menu changing dynamically depending on which top link is clicked, then clicking on one of those side links changes the content of the middle column.

Roger_Ramjet

Really don't understand your problem. Are the side menu contents that dynamic? Just code the links as links. Put them in fragment files so you dont have to keep on coding them over and over again for each page, then just include the relevent fragment in each page according to it's designated main section.


....

<div id="leftcol">
	<div id="columnheadings">Contents of the <br>Sub-Section</div><br>

<div id="sidenav">
<?
// test something somewhere for identity of main section

switch ($main) {
case  'home':
   include 'home_nav.php';
   break;
case 'writing':
   include 'writing_nav.php';
   break;
case 'waffle':
   include 'waffle_nav.php';

// etc

}
?>
	</div>
</div>
.....

// and in the fragments have

<?php // home_nav.php
?>
<ul>
			<li><a href="url">What's new?</a></li>
			<li><a href="url">Other Fabulous Content</a></li>
			<li><a href="url">What I've Learned</a></li>
			<li><a href="url">Quote of the Day</a></li>
			<li><a href="url">Teaching Ideas</a></li>

		<li><a href="url">School Work</a></li>
		<li><a href="url">New Writings</a></li>
		Invalid page!		</ul>

// where url IS the url of the page, which has exactly the same code for it's nav div

You can break this down even further by having the switch construct in an include file as well - I would but I want you to see what the logic of it is here. I'd have everything for side nav in an include, which itself has includes. If you want the actual list and links to be context sensitive to a greater extent than that then the principle will still be the same.

nick_kirby

Sorry, I'm not being very clear.

When a visitor clicks on home, or comps, or any of the top headers, the side menu changes to show what is related to that page.

I envisage it looking (the code) something like this:

If hyperlink (home ) is clicked then
sidebar changes to show:
stuff 1
stuff 2
stuff 3
etc...
end

If comps clicked then
sidebar changes to show
comps1
nets 1
picture nets 1
more comps2
etc..
end

Each side link then shows different content in the middle column, leaving everything else alone.

I have tried to "include" the php inside of the div tag, but so far, as the excellent

if ($_GET['p'] == "networking")
{ }

doesn't yet "work" as it doesn't refer to anything - as far as I know.

Have a look at the page. I hope it shows more sense than I am making:

www.niknet.homeip.net

Many thanks,

Nick

LoganK

That site you referenced uses JS to dynamically load the sidebar content...if you want to do that you can take a look at AJAX.

nick_kirby

Now I'm confused! Although it oens't take much. The javascript rounds the corners. It doesn't affect the content (I hope).

There must be a way of changing the contents of the #sidenav using the PHP code provided above. I am jsut not sure how to hook the PHP into the CSS list design.

LoganK

I've taken a look at your site, and it looks like you have separate pages for each of the main nav bars. So, under your writing.php, you'd want to change the sidelinks to something like "writing.php?content=blah", and then in the content area for writing.php, you'd change the content based on $_GET['content']

nick_kirby

Yes! But the question now is..how do I do that?

As the user navigates from one page to another, the sidebar naigation changesto reflect context based content. Clicking on one of those context links in the sidebar then changes the content in the middle column.

However, I apologise in being a dunce as I don't know how to do that. I am very grateful for everyone's help, I'm just a bit of a dippy.

If I could focus on getting the #sidenav to populate with context links, I should be able to reverse engineer the rest.

LoganK

You already have the sidebar links changing upon the main nav link clinking. Now all you need to do, like I said, is code the sidebar links like this: writing.php?content=blah.

Now in the main content area for writing.php, you do something like:

if ($_GET['content'] == "blah")
{
     echo "blah content";
     echo "More HTML code, or";
     include("blah.html");
}
elseif ($_GET['content'] == "foo")
{
     include("bar.html");
}
else
     echo "No valid page content selected!";

nick_kirby

I've changed if ($_GET['p'] == "index") inside of menus.php which is added as an include inside the CSS script for the #sidenav, but clickin on home doesn't change anything inside of the content.

Now, I can see where I am going wrong, but how do I put it right? The topnav bar functions to load a new page - I really want to avoid this, so what should i be doing?

Apologies, as I don't know what sort of code I need to use, or where.

LoganK

If you want to avoid the top-nav functions loading a new page, then the only way to do that is through JavaScript.