Numeric ID to Names?

[Teach]

Hello guys. 🙂
I hope you can help please.

I have the following script, which is a Contact page. When first loaded, it lists the members of staff, and then has links to the same page, with a numeric ID for their profile. Their profile is stored as a .html file in a 'staffinfo' directory.

For example, the /staff/index.php?id=2 will load 2.html from the 'staffinfo' directory to be loaded.

This works perfectly, however we want to change it a bit.

Instead of numeric Id's, we want names. Let's take the name Bob.
How can we make it so we can use /staff/index.php?name=Bob, and it would load a Bob.html from 'staffinfo' directory? Yep, with name= too instead of id=..

Current code, could we add an array for the staff names (hard-coded):

<?php
 include_once('/home/me/htdocs/header.php');

$id = (int)$_GET['id'];
if ($id <= 13 && $id >= 1) {

$info = "/home/me/htdocs/staffinfo/$id.html";

if (file_exists($info)) {
readfile($info);
} else {
echo "<p class=\"pagetitle1\">Sorry, that staff ID does not exist.  Please try again.</p>\n";
}

}
else {
 ?>

Staff list here.

<?php
}
 include_once('/home/me/htdocs/footer.php');
 ?>

Many thanks!

[thorpe]

Just make the array something like...

$users = array('bob' => 1,'foo' => 2,'bar' => 1);

[Teach]

Hi. 🙂

I asked my questions above...

Sorry if I wasn't clear.
Instead of having numeric ID's, (at the moment if /staff/index.php?id=1 is loaded, it loads 1.html from our staffinfo directory), we want to change that from numerical ID's to names.
So for example, to have /staff/index.php?name=Bob and have it load Bob.html from the 'staffinfo' directory.

So the questions I'm asking is...
1) how do I change it from id= to name=
2) how do I setup an array of names to .html files instead of having numeric Id's?

Ty.

[thorpe]

<?php
include_once('/home/me/htdocs/header.php');

$names = array('bob' => 1,'foo' => 2,'sam' => 3); // add users here.
if (isset($_GET['name'])) {
    $name = $_GET['name'];
    $info = "/home/me/htdocs/staffinfo/".$names[$name].".html";
    if (file_exists($info)) {
        readfile($info);
    } else {
        echo "<p class=\"pagetitle1\">Sorry, that staff ID does not exist.  Please try again.</p>\n";
    }
} else {
?>

Staff list here.

<?php
}
include_once('/home/me/htdocs/footer.php');
?>

[Teach]

Thank you sooo much, that is working nicely!
We wanted to get rid of numeric Id's, so instead of:

$names = array('bob' => 1,'foo' => 2,'sam' => 3); // add users here.

we used something like:

$names = array('bob' => bob,'foo' => foo,'sam' => sam); // add users here.

One more question though, no problem if this won't work.
IS there a way to make it non-sensitive to case? I.e. our .html files for 'sam' would be sam.html, so it would be loaded via index.php?name=sam, but could we get it to work for name=Sam too?

[vattila]

Here is something like hopefully you wanted. But why php?
it does nothing else then a simple html

<a href="bob.html">Bob</a>

or with php

echo "<a href="bob.html">Bob</a>";

<?php 
include_once('/home/me/htdocs/header.php'); 

if (isset($_GET['name']) { 

$name = $_GET['name'];
$info = "/home/me/htdocs/staffinfo/$name.html"; 

if (file_exists($info)) { 
readfile($info); 
} else { 
echo "<p class=\"pagetitle1\">Sorry, that staff ID does not exist.  Please try again.</p>\n"; 
} 

} 
else { 
?> 

Staff list here.
<a href="this.php?name=Bob">Bob</a>

<?php 
} 
include_once('/home/me/htdocs/footer.php'); 
?>

[Teach]

we want to keep the array, but just have it so it's not case sensitive.

In our staffinfo directory, we would have a Bob.html. This works perfect if the array says 'Bob' => Bob, and it is loaded with index.php?name=Bob.
However, I'm asking how I can get it so the array accepts other cases too, so index.php?name=bob would work too?

Thanks!

[Installer]

Try this:

$names = array('Bob','Foo','Sam'); 
if (isset($_GET['name'])) { 
    $name = ucfirst(strtolower($_GET['name'])); 
    $info = '/home/me/htdocs/staffinfo/' . $name . '.html'; 
    if (in_array($name, $names) && file_exists($info)) { 
        readfile($info); 
    } else { 
        echo 'Sorry, etc'; 
    } 
} else { 
    // code
}

[Teach]

Hey, thanks for that. 🙂

Unfortunately I can't get it working with the above code Installer.

I used the array like you put:
$names = array('Bob','Foo','Sam');

With all the names in upper case (for the first letter).
In the staffinfo directory I put all the filenames to lower, i.e. bob.html and tried, and just got the unknown name error (the echo).
I tried using Bob.html for all the staffinfo files and the same.

Any ideas?🙂

[Installer]

Here's some ugly code that might work (not thoroughly tested):

$names = array('Bob','Foo','Sam'); 
if (isset($_GET['name'])) { 
    $name = ucfirst(strtolower($_GET['name'])); 
    $path = '/home/me/htdocs/staffinfo/'; 
    if (in_array($name, $names)) {
        if (file_exists($path . $name . '.html')) { 
            readfile($path . $name . '.html'); 
        } elseif (file_exists($path . ($name = strtolower($name)) . '.html')) { 
            readfile($path . $name . '.html');
        } else {
            echo 'Sorry,etc.';
        }
    } 
} else { 
    // code 
}

[Teach]

Woohoo!
Working ok, except one little prob now!

If I give a wrong id, i.e. index.php?name=Sdksjdsk or name=sjsjkds it just shows a blank page no error.
Code:

<?php
 include_once('/home/me/htdocs/header.php');

$names = array('staff1','staff2');
if (isset($_GET['name'])) {
    $name = ucfirst(strtolower($_GET['name']));
    $path = '/home/me/htdocs/staffinfo/';
    if (in_array($name, $names)) {
        if (file_exists($path . $name . '.html')) {
            readfile($path . $name . '.html');
        } elseif (file_exists($path . ($name = strtolower($name)) . '.html')) {
            readfile($path . $name . '.html');
        } else {
        echo "<p class=\"pagetitle1\">Sorry, that staff name does not exist.  Please try again.</p>\n";
        }
    }
} else {
 ?>

The content here.

<?php
}
 include_once('/home/me/htdocs/footer.php');
 ?>

[Installer]

Just add an else option to the "if (in_array...":

$names = array('Bob','Foo','Sam'); 
if (isset($_GET['name'])) { 
    $name = ucfirst(strtolower($_GET['name'])); 
    $path = '/home/me/htdocs/staffinfo/'; 
    if (in_array($name, $names)) {
        if (file_exists($path . $name . '.html')) { 
            readfile($path . $name . '.html'); 
        } elseif (file_exists($path . ($name = strtolower($name)) . '.html')) { 
            readfile($path . $name . '.html');
        } else {
            echo 'Sorry, file not found.';
        }
    } else {
        echo 'Sorry, unknown name.';
    } 
} else { 
    echo 'Sorry, $_GET[name] not set.';
}

(Edited to change extensions back to ".html".)

[Teach]

Retry.

[Teach]

Woohoo got it working, thank you!!
I had to remove your bottom echo to make it work, so I'm using:

if (isset($_GET['name'])) {
    $name = ucfirst(strtolower($_GET['name']));
    $path = '/home/us/htdocs/staffinfo/';
    if (in_array($name, $names)) {
        if (file_exists($path . $name . '.html')) {
            readfile($path . $name . '.html');
        } elseif (file_exists($path . ($name = strtolower($name)) . '.html')) {
            readfile($path . $name . '.html');
        } else {
            echo "<p class=\"pagetitle1\">Sorry, $_GET[name] does not exist.  Please try again.</p>\n";
        }
    } else {
        echo "<p class=\"pagetitle1\">Sorry, $_GET[name] does not exist.  Please try again.</p>\n";
    }
} else {

[Installer]

It works for me on a Windows machine, but Windows is case-insensitive with file names, so the elseif clause always succeeds. I'll upload it to a Linux machine (after dinner) and test it.

The .txt was there for testing, I forgot to change them all back before posting.

Edit: Never mind, I just saw your last post. Glad you got it working.

[Teach]

Many, many thanks.
Very much appreciated. 🙂

[Cent]

Maybe its a little overkill... or perhaps its already there in some form. Wouldn't it be easier to just store that information in a database, query it on the result page and have an .htaccess to generate/present it as a HTML page? Assuming the x.html already existed (not a new site) and index or bookmarked by users or search engines -- you would save people from getting 404 errors during your conversion.