registering hyperlinks in PHP

MrPotatoes

i hope i get more help in this than i did the other questions i asked...

ok, this is what i'm trying to do. i want to be able to register a link that is clicked and then get that link name and include a file associated with it. this is pseudo code so bear with:

if (getlink($clickedlink))
        include $clickedlink.'php';

what it is supposed to do is register the link that was clicked and then add the '.php' at the end and then include that file. of course i'll do some security measure and check to see if the file exists and such but i would like to know if i could do this.

there is also the security part of it that could be a problem. accessing an arbitrary file that is on the server somewhere but i'm not sure how to check to make sure that it only checks files that exist within the spectrum of the root folder. .htacess maybe?

either way, those are my questions. i'm not completely sure how to go about this but i think it's a great idea. it's just the issue of actually implementing that is difficult

gotissues68

I want to clarify so I understand what you're trying to do.

so for instance you have

<a href=link>link</a> and when that link is clicked you're wanting the link reference (ie the link portion of <a href=link>) to be registered as link.php correct?

MrPotatoes

more or less. i want to take what is in the HREF and use it to loadup a page within another page. i'm trying to remove always including a header and a footer in everypage. just once in the index and the index loads up everything in there.

so i'm thinking that it would work something relatativly close to this:

$about_us = 'about us';
<a href=$about_us>About Us</a>

if (getlink($about_us))
include $about_us.php;

the getlink function would check for file exists and all that junk. i'm not sure if this is possible or even a good idea but it's worth a shot

gotissues68

I didn't see a getlink function in the php.net manual so I'm assuming its homebrewed? You could do file validation with file_exists() which would validate the existence of any given link-> file combo. As far as security. You could set a BASEDIR variable ... I think you should be safe that way but don't quote me on it.

MrPotatoes

no, getlink would be my function. s oyes home brewed. and i was setting up a base directory there so hopefully that will be secure enough.

thanx for the help, i'll give that a show sometime this week