include files changes

Tomcat13

Hello everyone

How do you go about, when you make changes in your include files, so the changes take effect on the articles or pages that you have created in your database?
I have four include files in my website, menu.inc, leftside.inc, rightside.inc, bottom.inc
I am doing articles in phpMyAdmin/MySQL like this:
"domainname/news.php?articleid=170", the MySQL creates the article ID automatically, everything works fine, but when I make changes in the include files, using the FTP, the changes only show in the files with the .php extension, (which BTW are not in my db), but not in the pages with the articleid extension (which are in my db).
Where and how do I find and edit these include files so the changes will take effect on these pages that I made in the database?

Let me rephrase this:
I know where the include files are. In directories with my php files/pages. The question is, how do I put together in the same directory the articleid pages from the database and the include files, so when I make changes in the include files, the changes will take effect on the articleid pages.

There is a possibility that I didn't explain this very well, so if you have questions please ask.

Your help and advise will be greatly appreciated

etully

You shouldn't have to. When you use a web browsr to call this file: "domainname/news.php?articleid=170", news.php should be including menu.inc, leftside.inc, rightside.inc, bottom.inc. Right?

The data in your database should just be the body of the article, not the menu, left, right, and bottom. That's why you have include files... so that when you modify them, the changes appear when news.php builds the article page.

If, for some reason, you are storing the entire page in the database (rather than just the body of the article), then... ummm... I can't think of any easy way to update those pages in your database. If you are doing it that way, it's probably easier to change how you store articles than it is to try to update the menu, left, right, and bottom data in the database for each article.

Tomcat13

etully wrote:
You shouldn't have to. When you use a web browsr to call this file: "domainname/news.php?articleid=170", news.php should be including menu.inc, leftside.inc, rightside.inc, bottom.inc. Right?

You're absolutely right!
And let me say that I finally found somebody that understands my problem!

Here is the code I use to retrieve the articles from the db in my news.php page:

<?php

$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "XXXXXXX", "XXXXXXXX") or die(mysql_error());

mysql_select_db("XXXXXXX", $db) or die(mysql_error());
if(!isset($GET['articleid']) || empty($GET['articleid']))
{

$get = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM XXXXXXXXX ") or die(mysql_error());

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($get))
{
// Declare your variables in here
$id = $row['ID'];
$title = $row['title'];
$date = $row['date'];
$article = $row['article'];

  echo("<a href='http://www.mydomain.com./about/news.php?articleid=$id'>$id</a><br>");

}
}
else
{
$get = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM article_news WHERE ID='".$_GET['articleid']."' LIMIT 1");

$info = mysql_fetch_array($get);

// Display a link to the article index 🙂
echo '<a href="'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'"></a>';

echo $info['article'];

}

</body>
</html>

The above script pulls out the articles with the articlle id, no problem at all.
But when I go to add the includes, it gives me a parse error like this:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected '<' in /home/XXXXXX/public_html/about/menu.inc on line 22

etully wrote:
The data in your database should just be the body of the article, not the menu, left, right, and bottom. That's why you have include files... so that when you modify them, the changes appear when news.php builds the article page.

Again you're right.

etully wrote:
If, for some reason, you are storing the entire page in the database (rather than just the body of the article), then... ummm... I can't think of any easy way to update those pages in your database. If you are doing it that way, it's probably easier to change how you store articles than it is to try to update the menu, left, right, and bottom data in the database for each article.

That's how I did it with the entire pages. No biggie i can change it. But when I store just the body of the article, and I pull everything else out, all I get is the article, widespread from side to side, the length of the screen, without the includes, (top, bottom, left and right). I wanna change the way I store these articles, it will definitly be much easier to edit from the includes, instead of one by one!

I appreciate your help and I thank you very much.

If you wish to help me resolve this I would really appreciate it, and I wanna thank you once again

etully

Looking at your PHP code above, there are no include statements - and I can't fix them if you don't show me what you were doing. 🙂

In general, news.php needs to look like this:

Backup your current work and then modify news.php to look like mine and show me the error messages.

The only reason you were seeing the body widespread from edge to edge was because the include statements weren't working so there was no header, nav bar, or footer. That shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Tomcat13

This is the code I use (with the includes):

<html>
<body>
<?php
include("menu.inc");
include("leftside.inc");

$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "XXXXXXX", "XXXXXXXX") or die(mysql_error());

mysql_select_db("XXXXXXXX", $db) or die(mysql_error());
if(!isset($GET['articleid']) || empty($GET['articleid']))
{

$get = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM XXXXXXXXX ") or die(mysql_error());

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($get))
{
// Declare your variables in here
$id = $row['ID'];
$title = $row['title'];
$date = $row['date'];
$article = $row['article'];

  echo("<a href='http://www.mydomain.com./about/news.php?articleid=$id'>$id</a><br>");

}
}
else
{
$get = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM XXXXXXXXX WHERE ID='".$_GET['articleid']."' LIMIT 1");

$info = mysql_fetch_array($get);

// Display a link to the article index 🙂
echo '<a href="'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'"></a>';

echo $info['article'];

}

include("rightside.inc");
include("bottom.inc");
?>
</body>
</html>

But like I said when I use the code with the includes, (just like above), it gives me the parse error that I mentioned before.

What do u mean by "... display list of articles or article body" in the code?
Shouldn't the code be sufficient for as long as it retrieves the articles?

Please explain if you can...

I should mention that the includes work perfect with all the other files in directories outside the db, on files with the .php extention

etully

When I said, "... display list of articles or article body", I was just using shorthand to sum up what your code does. (And that's what your code does - first it connects to the database and then it either displays a list of articles OR it displays the article body). I didn't want to complicate my example with lots of PHP. I just wanted to show you where the include statements should go and how they should look.

And they look fine.

So now that I know that you're writing news.php correctly, I just need to see the contents of menu.inc since the error message says the problem is with line 22. We're getting closer.

Tomcat13

Actually I don't think that it has anything to do with the menu.inc
But if you think you need to see it I can post it.
I've tried it where I took out of the code the top two includes (menu.inc and leftside.inc), and left the two on the bottom (rightside.inc and bottom.inc).
Then the page showed but at the very bottom another parse error showed up:
Parse error: parse error, unexpected '<' in /home/XXXXXXX/public_html/about/rightside.inc on line 6

What I think is happening here is that the code is retrieving articles from the db, but there is a conflict somewhere, and it's unable, first to accept the includes (that's why we get the errors), and then to pick up or read the includes

etully

You're definitely right. There is a conflict somewhere. And to find where it is, you have to look at the code.

I think the conflict appears in all four include files... so taking TWO of them out is just going to make a different one report an error. Notice the error the first time? It was line 22 of menu.inc. That's a clue.

Tomcat13

So, what's next? 🙂

etully

I'm trying to show you how to troubleshoot this.

Here's what we know so far:

news.php is fine
when you include files A, B, C, and D, you get an error message in A
when you include files C and D, you get an error message in C

So the logical conclusion is NOT that file A is working fine. The logical conclusion is that all four files A, B, C and D are broken.

And the only way to see what's broken in them is to look at the code.

Tomcat13

The code in the includes is in HTML.

What should I be looking for? Anything in particular?

Like I said the includes work fine with the extention ".php" outside the db

It's only when I try to retrieve the articles from the db that the includes don't work, getting those error messages.

Tomcat13

etully,

I've got it!!!!

What was causing all the problems was the "<?php" and "?>" in the includes.
You ommit those and your up and running! So far so good!!

So, that took care of it!!!

If I run into anymore problems I'll let you know! 🆒 🙂

Much obliged and best regards

Thanks pardner!

Tomcat13

How do u mark this topis as "RESOLVED"?

Can I do it or is it a mod's job?