index.php do or don't

[spiritssight]

Hello,

I have a question, the question is I have 6 features on the site, they all right now have there own dir with a index.php in them, all of the index.php are the same except for 3 lines which are var that are used for the included files.

I am going to copy two of the files and I will mark the first one with more remarks of what each part does.

So my question is could I make it where I only have one and still have it function the same way as it runs now?

Should I keep all 6 or should I shrink them to 1? if I should keep them as 6, why?

I would really prefer not to pass more stuff through the url and I am trying to stay away from doing things on the client side.

Thanks for your assistance and helping me make my script more user friendly for adjusting if needed. I will be working on later to make my search form that shows on the main screen work with one file instead of having 6 of them as the box does not change only the process used to search the database and that can be changed using a var :-)

Sincerely,
Christopher

index.php -- search

<?php
include '/home/dev/www/lib/php_header.php';

include '/home/dev/www/lib/site_bar.php';  // this is the line with sign in / out and greeting
$tab ='Search';  // this var is used to tell tab_bar which link is being used so it does not show as a link and show as text only
include '/home/dev/www/lib/tab_bar.php';  // this is the line that has the links to the feature on the site 
include '/home/dev/www/lib/admin_bar.php';  // this is the links that show under the tab_bar and this is only for when a person sign in that is staff

$feature = 'search';   // this is for the search_display.php to allow me to use only one of these files instead of 6 of them
$main_screen = 'blank'; // this tell search_display.php the name of the file that is displayed when picking a feature and did not enter a search string main screens of the features 
include '/home/dev/www/lib/search_display.php';

include '/home/dev/www/lib/php_footer.php';
?>

index.php -- QnA

<?php
include '/home/dev/www/lib/php_header.php';

include '/home/dev/www/lib/site_bar.php';

$tab ='QnA';
include '/home/dev/www/lib/tab_bar.php';
include '/home/dev/www/lib/admin_bar.php';

$feature = 'qna';
$main_screen = 'qna_common';
include '/home/dev/www/lib/search_display.php';

include '/home/dev/www/lib/php_footer.php';
?>

[Jack_McSlay]

there's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping 6 index.php files now that you have separated the code so that similar pages do not get redundantly rewritten.

However, you could shrink down the amount of includes, because they apparently never changes and you could put each include at the end of the previous.

[spiritssight]

Hello Jack,

what do you mean?

However, you could shrink down the amount of includes, because they apparently never changes and you could put each include at the end of the previous

there's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping 6 index.php files now that you have separated the code so that similar pages do not get redundantly rewritten.

Do you mean that because I have put say the search_form into lib and use that one form for all six index.php that it would not make much of a different?

Sincerely,
Christopher