[RESOLVED] Including PHP file without using "include" function

angershallreign

Hey folks 🙂 Here is my code so far...

<?php 
$location = "<a href=\"index.php\">Namco Central</a> :: Home";
$content = "<h1>Welcome to Namco Central!</h1><p>Namco Central is a website dedicated 

primarily to Namco's fighting games, such as Tekken and Soul Calibur. To navigate the site, 

highlight over the navigation button and select the section you want to visit.</p>
<h1>Latest Forum Posts</h1>http://www.namcocentral.com/recent.php</p>";
include "template.php";
?>

Basically, where it says "http://www.namcocentral.com/recent.php", I want to insert that file. However, because I am already using the "include" function, using the include function a second time confuses the server.

Is there any other way of inserting the file?

PS: My forum keeps getting hit by spam bots, so the recent threads in that "recent.php" all have explicit titles. Please don't be put off by this.

Horizon88

require(), require_once() would both do it as well, but I'm not quite sure why include() won't work.

angershallreign

Thanks for the help 😃

I still can't seem to get the code to work though. I've probably done something wrong.

<?php 
$location = "<a href=\"index.php\">Namco Central</a> :: Home";
$content = "<h1>Welcome to Namco Central!</h1><p>Namco Central is a website dedicated primarily to Namco's fighting games, such as Tekken and Soul Calibur. To navigate the site, highlight over the navigation button and select the section you want to visit.</p>
<h1>Latest Forum Posts</h1>"
require ('http://www.namcocentral.com/recent.php');
include "template.php";
?>

Now that I've changed the code to that I get the following error...

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_REQUIRE in /home/namcocen/public_html/new/index.php on line 5

Any further help would be much appreciated 🙂

dougal85

Why does include 'confuse' the server? or even how?

The reason you get that error is because you have forgotten your ; on the previous line.

angershallreign

Right well I just put the missing ";" in. That got rid of the error, but now the document I'm including is not included as part of the $content variable.

http://namcocentral.com/new/index.php

This was the problem I was having at the beginning. I guess it doesn't matter whether I use "include" or "require".

Any way I can fix the problem I'm having?

baffled_in_UK

Hi,

can you post the code again so we can see what you have recently changed?

angershallreign

All I changed was the semi-colon.

Here is the source code for the page anyway 🙂

<?php
$location = "<a href=\"index.php\">Namco Central</a> :: Home";
$content = "<h1>Welcome to Namco Central!</h1><p>Namco Central is a website dedicated primarily to Namco's fighting games, such as Tekken and Soul Calibur. To navigate the site, highlight over the navigation button and select the section you want to visit.</p>
<h1>Latest Forum Posts</h1>";
require ('http://www.namcocentral.com/recent.php');
include "template.php";
?>

If you can find where I've gone wrong, it'd be a great help.

baffled_in_UK

Hi,

Think I know the answer. I wrote a couple of test pages and tried the same thing.

$location = "<a href=\"index.php\">Namco Central</a> :: Home"; 
$content = "<h1>Welcome to Namco Central!</h1><p>Namco Central is a website dedicated primarily to Namco's fighting games, such as Tekken and Soul Calibur. To navigate the site, highlight over the navigation button and select the section you want to visit.</p> 
<h1>Latest Forum Posts</h1>"; 
include ("http://www.mysite.com/test3.php"); 
include ("test2.php");

and it failed. It's because it seems you can't use a standard url in the include, however if you use the path:

$env = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; 
$location = "<a href=\"index.php\">Namco Central</a> :: Home"; 
$content = "<h1>Welcome to Namco Central!</h1><p>Namco Central is a website dedicated primarily to Namco's fighting games, such as Tekken and Soul Calibur. To navigate the site, highlight over the navigation button and select the section you want to visit.</p> 
<h1>Latest Forum Posts</h1>"; 
include ("$env/test3.php"); 
include ("test2.php");

it works fine.

angershallreign

Thank you for taking the time to test my code and find out what was wrong 🙂

I still, however, need to find out how to display the "recent.php" file underneath the "Latest Forum Posts" section of the page. If you don't understand what I mean, here is the actual page.

http://namcocentral.com/new/index.php

Any recommendations folks? 😃

baffled_in_UK

Just do as I suggested, either use the full path or just recent.php in the include and it will work fine. Give it a go.

angershallreign

baffled_in_UK wrote:
Just do as I suggested, either use the full path or just recent.php in the include and it will work fine. Give it a go.

I copied your code, only changing "test2" and "test3" to "template" and "recent". But I still get the same result, for some reason 😕

Just to show you, here is the code...

<?php 
$env = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$location = "<a href=\"index.php\">Namco Central</a> :: Home";
$content = "<h1>Welcome to Namco Central!</h1><p>Namco Central is a website dedicated primarily to Namco's fighting games, such as Tekken and Soul Calibur. To navigate the site, highlight over the navigation button and select the section you want to visit.</p>
<h1>Latest Forum Posts</h1>";
include ("$env/recent.php");
include ("template.php");

I really don't understand what the problem is now. Oh well... I guess this has taught me that PHP isn't an easy language :p

baffled_in_UK

Is that the whole code from your page? If not post it all and I'll have a look to see if I can see where it's going wrong for you.

angershallreign

baffled_in_UK wrote:
Is that the whole code from your page? If not post it all and I'll have a look to see if I can see where it's going wrong for you.

Yeah, that's the entire code for the page.

Maybe it'll help you a little if I explain how my site has been coded... 🙂

Basically, there are two variables on each page ($content and $location). Each page relies on "template.php" for formatting, in order to ensure that each page remains consistent in design.

I am now trying to include a third document into the mix - which is this "recent.php". I need to find a way to include the text generated by "recent.php" into the $content variable for this particular page.

If I haven't explained myself clearly enough, then tell me and I will reword it 🙂

baffled_in_UK

You can't include the recent.php into the $content value but can you not put the include of recent.php within the template.php ? I think that is your only solution because you are putting template.php out to the browser here and it cannot be changed by an incxlude or any other other means.

Does that make snese to you?

If you're not sure let me have a look at the template .php

NogDog

include()/require() are for reading the specified file and processing its contents as if it were code typed into the script at the point where it is included. If all you want to do is append the contents of that file to your $content variable, then use file_get_contents():

$location = "<a href=\"index.php\">Namco Central</a> :: Home";
$content = "<h1>Welcome to Namco Central!</h1><p>Namco Central is a website dedicated

primarily to Namco's fighting games, such as Tekken and Soul Calibur. To navigate the site,

highlight over the navigation button and select the section you want to visit.</p>
<h1>Latest Forum Posts</h1>";
$content .= file_get_contents('http://www.namcocentral.com/recent.php');

angershallreign

NogDog - That worked a treat! Thank you 😃

And thanks to everyone else who helped, especially baffled_in_UK 🙂

baffled_in_UK wrote:
You can't include the recent.php into the $content value but can you not put the include of recent.php within the template.php ? I think that is your only solution because you are putting template.php out to the browser here and it cannot be changed by an incxlude or any other other means.

Does that make snese to you?

If you're not sure let me have a look at the template .php

Yeah that makes sense. Although it probably would have fixed the problem, it would have made the code really complex as "recent.php" is quite a complex script. Anyway, its resolved now.

Thanks once again everyone 😃