multiple includes - confusing

[Rodders]

Hi

I have a section of my website which has 3 almost identical bits of HTML. The difference is only the text within the tags. I want to use my Page class to setup the PHP variables, I then want to "plug" the 3 pieces of HTML into the rest of my page content before finally outputting it.

<div class="thisdiv">
<span>$headline_text</span>
$message_text
[<a href="news.php?news_id=$message_id">more...</a>]
</div>

In the code above I have just put the PHP variable names to show their position.

To make future changes to this code easy I would like to put the HTML into a separate file in my "includes" directory.

How can I "include" (or similar) the file 3 times, with 3 different sets of variable values, yet not output it immediately?

Ideally something like:

// first bit of page content
$content = "<p>This is some content on the page......</p>";

// setup the variables for the first message
$headline_text = "headline1";
$message_text = "This is the first message block";
$message_id = 34;

// plug those into the template file
$content .= include "includes/message_inc.php";

// setup the variables for the second message
$headline_text = "headline2";
$message_text = "This is the second message block";
$message_id = 42;

// plug those into the template file
$content .= include "includes/message_inc.php";


// setup the variables for the third message
$headline_text = "headline3";
$message_text = "This is the third message block";
$message_id = 53;

// plug those into the template file
$content .= include "includes/message_inc.php";

$content .= "<p>some more content goes here...</p>";

// output the content now it is complete
echo $content;

1. does this make sense?
2. is it possible?

[iNFERiON]

It is possible to include 1 file multiple times. However I recommend you to use a function instead. This will help keep your source more compact. Functions can be called multiple times with different variables. Here is an example for your case.

<?php
function template($headline_text,$message_text,$message_id) {
  // This is an example layout
  $content .= "<b>$headline_text</b><br /><br />\n";
  $content .= $message_text . "<br />\n";
  $content .= "[<a href=\"news.php?news_id=$message_id\">more...</a>]";
  return $content;
}
?>

Then call the function and define the variables like this.

<?php
template("Headline","Message",11);
?>

Whenever you are ready to echo all the content, use this:

echo $content;

This would in this small example, output:

Headline

Message
[more...]

Don't forget to include the file containing your function in the file where you want to call it from.

If this does not make much sense yet, try reading into functions some more. Hope this will get you going on the right track 🙂

[Rodders]

that's great thanks. I've used that method before, but find it looks untidy sometimes. I suppose it's up to me to make it as tidy as possible.

cheers