Dynamic CSS and PHP

paul088

I am learning to use PHP for dynamic CSS. It looks pretty straightforward. So I created something very simple to test. Not being able to get it to work has been driving me nut for the whole day. Could someone tell me what I did wrong. Here are my simple codes:

CSS file - dstyle.php. The first attribute is static just for checking if the file is actually loaded by the html page.

<?php 
Header ("Content-type: text/css");

echo "
.font1 {color: #006600;}
.font2 {color: #$_GET[font2];}
";
?>

When I ran dstyle.php?font2=66666, a text file (.css) is generated like this:

.font1 {color: #006600;}
.font2 {color: #666666];}

Suggesting that thing is working in this regard.

PHP web file - test_dstyle.php

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>
<head>
<title>Test dynamic css</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="dstyle.php" media="screen" />

</head>
<body>
<div class="font1">font1</div>
<div class="font2">font2</div>

</body>
</html>

When I ran test-dstyle.php?font2=666666, font1 shows correctly but not font2. One possible reason is that when the css file (dstyle.php) is loaded with "link" in the page header, the $GET[] variable doesn't get any value. If that is the case, what should I do? Or could this be due to other problems? I read many articles about dynamic css and php but no one mentions $GET[] issue. Any help shall be greately appreciated.

Paul

NogDog

For the $GET value to be received, you need to send it in the URL, e.g.:

. . . href="dstyle.php[color=red]?font2=336699[/color]" . . .

If you want to set a default color if no value is received, then in your PHP code:

<?php
$font2 = '000000'; // default
if(isset($_GET['font2']))
{
   // make sure it's a valid 3- or 6-digit hex value:
   if(preg_match('/^([0-9a-f]{3}){1,2}$/i', $_GET['font2'])
   {
      $font2 = $_GET['font2'];
   }
}
header ("Content-Type: text/css"); // btw: "Type" should be capitalized, too
echo "
.font1 {color: #006600;}
.font2 {color: #$font2;}
";
?>

paul088

Thanks for the post. If I have to put a value in the URL link inside the header, this approach is not very useful.

rsmith

You also had a typo here:

.font2 {color: #666666];}

There shouldn't be the ] at the end of your hex code.

paul088

Thank nogdog and rsmith. I will stop looking into this for now.