[RESOLVED] Outputting PHP to HTML

jesuslover037

Hey,

I really like PHP, but I've noticed that in my old sites, my PHP and HTML content seems too mixed. For instance, I'll have my main page with lots of php code and some html mixed in. Is there any way I can filter this, perhaps create a class or set of functions that could output my php results to an html file? Thanks for the input(no pun intended).

houston08

Hey. Love the screen name. Same here. I'm not sure of your question. Are you wanting to take all the PHP code in a document and put it in a html doc so you can see what is there? Or whatever the results of a query may be, output them to a html file, or something else?

jesuslover037

Thanks! Good to know we're still out there. Actually, you're close when you say outputting the query results. Actually, though, I was wanting to pass the results of strings such as the site title dividers(NEWS, ABOUT US)--basically stuff I may want to change in the future and not hard-coded in the HTML. Also, stuff like my header background image, since this may change as well. I know in Java there are functions that let you send output to your html form, but I haven't ever seen that in PHP. What I want may not be possible, I'm just curious to see... Thanks.

dougal85

Are you looking for a template engine?

jesuslover037

Maybe? Haven't ever heard of that? Is it worthwhile for what I'm doing?

dougal85

Quite possibly. It helps you to seperate you PHP (logic) from the HTML (presentation) - It can make the code much tidier and easier to maintain.

The most popular one is probably Smarty. However, google "php template engline" and you will find many choices.

jesuslover037

Excellent. Thanks, this sounds like it is exactly what I need. I'm building a church website and want to keep it tidy, so hopefully this will work.

benracer

Hi,
I try and seperate my first final page into segments, i have a header and footer. Then i use the include function on all of my pages to get the code. This is particually handy if you need a template that follows through the whole site. Also if a change is to be made then only one page has to be edited and not x amount of hard coded. Hope this helps, Ben.

jesuslover037

Thanks Ben,

I'll keep that in mind when i'm coding! I'm gonna mark this as resolved but feel free to keep talking if you want to.