Question

drndrw

Hi. I have been reading about PHP and MySQL for a little while now, so I know a bit of both, but not a lot. Now, I have a pretty basic question... How can I have multiple pages on a single file? You probably don't understand what I am asking, so I will break it down. When I submit a post and it appears, a new web page is not created, but rather it is an extension (if you would call it that) of the PHP file, showthread.php. I am assuming this is a simple thing to do with if else, but I am not sure. Please help me. Thank you 🙂!

-drndrw

bogu

<center>
<a href="index.php">Home</a> | <a href="index.php?page=contact">Contact</a>
<br /><br />
<?php
if (!empty($_GET['page']))
    echo "This is the {$_GET['page']} page!";
else
    echo "This is the home page!";
?>
</center>

is this what u are looking for?

drndrw

I am pretty sure it is. I will try it out later on. Thank you 🙂! But it is just that simple? And !empty is kind of the same thing as $variable == '' ?

bradgrafelman

drndrw wrote:
And !empty is kind of the same thing as $variable == '' ?

"Kind of," except there's a couple of differences:

Using $variable == "" will generate a warning (or notice? don't remember...) if $variable isn't initialized (same for array indeces).
[man]empty/man, as the manual points out, doesn't just return true for NULL strings.

greenie2600

To elaborate a bit:

PHP is just a tool for writing HTML dynamically (on the fly), by outputting different HTML when different logical conditions are met.

"Different pages" are really just different arrangements of HTML.

So, as bogu illustrates, you just need to write your PHP in such a way that different HTML is produced under different conditions.

The particulars vary widely depending on what you're trying to accomplish, but this is the basic principle.

drndrw

Ah okay. So I think I know what NULL means, but it means something is emty, correct? So I could do what you displayed above like this as well:

if ($variable == NULL)

bradgrafelman

You could, though using [man]empty/man (or, [man]isset/man before checking if it's NULL) is preferred, in case the variable wasn't initiated in the first place (as I said in point #1 of my above post).