replacing text of .html and .php files dynamically?

mgscom

Hello,
Say I have one .html file and one .php file, as templates. I need to dynamically to replace some of the text in those two files with PHP script. For example, I need to replace
action="myphp.php" with action="mynewphp.php" in the form of .html file,

and, replace in the .php file:

$my_file = "myphp.php";

with

$my_file = "mynewphp.php";

So that my .html and .php files dynamically points to different ones, as needed.

To achieve this, I think I need to read the .html and .php file as text, then do the replacement, then save back to .html and .php file formats....

I am not sure if file_get_contents and file_put_contents will work (both get to and save from a string). I quickly tried them but no luck.

Anyone can offer some pointers? Thanks in advance.

Jason

subwayman

Er.. why not use PHP to do this at the time the pages are served? I.e. make the pages do it for themselves.

mgscom

Thanks for your reply. There is a special need to "generate" those two types of files dynamically based on the templates. The only difference will be some texts.

Or forget the scenario I described. Can I do text replacements of .html and .php files, i.e. only replace some of the text in the source code level, and yet the saved new files are still in .html and .php format, respectively...

Thanks again.

subwayman

What triggers the change in the files - is it a user request from a browser? Or does this have to happen 'off-line'. Can you flesh out the requirements a bit?

mgscom

OK, hopefully I do not confuse you. Again thanks for your response.

I need tp provide my customers proof for their uploaded artwork. Since I do not have login systems built at this time, I am thinking whenever there is a need to send proof to a particular customer, I use PHP to dynamically generate a web page just for this customer (with his/her artwork loaded when a correct passcode entered.). The names of the web page will refer to his/her order, so same for any references within the .html file and .php file. (Note my implementation is that .php file will "load" the .html file that has forms, etc. in it, so for a page, I have two files associated with it, one .html and one .php). I will also automatically generate passcode based on the file name and this passcode will be passed on to customer in the email where a link to this proof page will be included. Only he/she can access this web page, which will dynamically load the artwork for their review, after the passcode is entered....

For this, I need to dynamically replace the file pointers to reflect the dynamic web page name....

subwayman

Not too difficult then. You can use PHP to read through a template file and replace specific text and write to a new file - thereby creating a web page for each individual order. The trick is to use some form of template structure which is easy to implement. There are a number in the code libary on this site but a simple one would be to include sections within your template file that can be uniquely identified by a PHP script. I usually use a tag style approach such was <template>ordernumber</template>. Use ereg to search for <template>...</template> and replace it with whatever you need. When working in files PHP doesn't care if they are .php or .html to a script they are simply collections of data.