refer to external php and back without going to another page

dangdk

Hi,

I am a php and myQSL newbie but have somethign that's causing me a bit of trouble:

I have excluded the database connection lines but the code at the end of the page is the basis for my "develop_news_table.php" file. It searches my database of news articles for news linked to a company's name (provided in the $test_string) by seeing if it is any of the 4 company columns and making an a array of the rows that do and ordering them by date ($result).

It then prints them out.

I will have many different pages for each company and the coding for the news clippets section will be the same in each case with only the name of the company changing. I would prefer to have the company page as a html that then includes the results from develop_table.php in one of the cells. This way I can change the format of the develop_table code only once rather than for every page.

So I need the html page to send a variable (company name) to the php file which then uses that as $test_string (instead of the specific name I currently have in the code below).

Ideally I would like $result to be sent back to the html file so I can format things nicely but I dont think that is possible. So instead I would just like to embed what the php file does on the html cell and do this all on the html page.

I dont really want to have to rename all my files php and this will also affect exisiting dreamweaver templates.

If making each company page a php is the only option, how can I still refer to an external php file with the company name and then return the data to the original page as the array which can then be formatted (or also do all the formatting/printing in the external file but while on the company's main php page).

I hope this is clear, I want to have an external php file do something but not by loading a new page in the browser. cheers, here is the code:

<?
$test_string = "iogen";
$query = sprintf("SELECT * FROM news_articles WHERE company1='%s' OR company2='%s' OR company3='%s' OR company4='%s'ORDER BY date DESC", mysql_real_escape_string($test_string), mysql_real_escape_string($test_string), mysql_real_escape_string($test_string), mysql_real_escape_string($test_string));
$result = mysql_query($query);
if (empty($result))
{ print"No Data"; }
else

{
if (mysql_num_rows($result) == 0)
{
echo " " . "
There are currently no news articles available" . " " ;
exit;
}
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
echo $row['date'] . " ";
echo $row['title'];
echo $row['company1'];
print "\r\n";
}
}
?>

bradgrafelman

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but it sounds like an HTML-only page (e.g. .html) isn't going to get you what you want.

Instead, using a .php page, you can [man]include/man this script inside others wherever you like.

dangdk

well I tried that and it doesnt seem to work.

I tried to reference the above file in another php using the line

include 'http://www.biorefining.ie/php_tests/GET-company.php?=iogen';

and changing the first line in of code in my first post to:

$test_string = $_GET["company"]

Now the external php doesnt print the table nor does it seem to pass the value of $result back to the main php since in that file the following:

if (empty($result))
{ print"No Data"; }

Is positive rather than:

else

{
if (mysql_num_rows($result) == 0)
{
echo " " . "
There are currently no news articles available" . " " ;
exit;
}

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
{
echo $row['date'] . "<br />";
echo $row['title'];
echo $row['company1'];
print "\r\n";

}

}

$test

bradgrafelman

If you're using $_GET['company'], then you need to use 'company' as the variable name in the URL, e.g. ?company=foo .

dangdk

yeah , sorry i did use the company bit before, i pasted an earlier text, but it still doesnt work.

by the way i dont think that putting company in is necessary since (when I just had 1 php file and no include linkages) just typing ?=xxx worked in this case since there is only 1 GET variable

I still cant get a non-empty response for $result after my include line though 🙁

Also, the php mention in the include (get-company.php) also includes the echo while loop you can see in the code for the main php file but that didnt print either. In contrast, if I use exactly the same php file (get-company.php) as my main file with no includes then the echo loop (for printing the data) comes out.