page.php?section - how to? - PHPBuilder Forums

page.php?section - how to?

Maia

I'm thinking this is a question about one of those things that's so relatively simple you can't find info on it anywhere because everyone assumes you want to know about more complicated things...

What I want to do, basically, is have a page called page.php with a bunch of includes on it for a header and a footer and so on, and one 'variable' include for the body that changes based on the url. So if it's 'page.php?somesection', the page includes 'somesection.html' and if it's 'page.php?anothersection' it includes 'anothersection.html' and if it's just 'page.php' it includes 'main.html'....that general idea. Or maybe, if it's easier, a setup like 'page.php?section=something' instead.

I can figure out how to make this work, but what I haven't been able to figure out how to do, out of this, is extract whatever comes after the ? in the url and assign it to a variable. I know it's got to be something extremely simple because I've seen this on thousands of sites but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it. Some assistance, please?

Nomaad

$thispage = 'page.php';

$id = $_GET['id'] ;

mysql_query("SELECT * FROM yourtable WHERE id = '$id'") or die(mysql_error());

then however your gonna do the data (assoc, row, or array)

Then when you write a link make sure you go <? echo "a href=\"$thispage?id=$id\">what ever the link maybe you could do $somevariablehere </a>"; ?>

Make any sense? Hope it helps.

DisOrDeR1337

The way this would work is lets say your leftnav has links like

<a href="?p=about">About</a>

This would put about.php in the right table.

<body>

<table border=0 width="750" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3>
	<tr>
		<td width="130" class="link" valign="top" align="right">
		<? 	include "leftnavigation.php"; ?> 
		</td>
		<td valign="top">
		<? 
		if ($p == "") {
	   		include "defaultpage.php";
		} else  {
		   include ($page.'.php');
		}
		?> 

</tr>
</table>

</body>

laserlight

Nomaad's implementation is more secure, assuming steps have been taken to prevent SQL injection. Another secure (though more inflexible) solution is to create an array of the page include indices, then search the array for the incoming page include index. If this is found, then the relevant file is included, otherwise the default is displayed.

$sections = array('somesection', 'anothersection');
if (isset($_GET['section']) && in_array($_GET['section'], $sections)) {
	include $_GET['section'] . '.html';
} else {
	include 'main.html';
}

Basically, the idea of searching the database or array is that you ensure that the user has not tried to alter the section name/value pair to something unexpected. The database option is more flexible since you can modify what pages to include from some interface (perhaps one that you have implemented yourself), but you must take care of SQL injection or face security vulnerabilities.