include() help

potatoCode

Hello php experts!

I'm trying to find the best practice to include header/footer,
and some general questions about include()

Say I have the following page

<!-- main page -->
<html>
<head>
<title>home</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello World</p>
</body>
</html>

And this is how I break it up in parts.
1. main page

<div class="header"><?php include('header.php') ?></div>
<p>Hello World</p>
<div class="footer"><?php include('footer.php') ?></div>

2. header.php

<?php echo "header.htm" ?>

2.1 header.htm

<html>
<head>
<title>home</title>
</head>
<body>

3. footer.php

<?php echo "footer.htm" ?>

3.1 footer.htm

</body>
</html>

The reason why I'm using two seperate files in each header/footer.php is that,
I have to escape double quotes if I were to design html contents in php directly.
e.g

<?php echo "<a href=\"somelink.html\">some linke</a>" ?>

And I don't want that.

So my questions are;

Q1. Is there a performance penalty by the way I'm including?

Q2. Does include() merely replaces the file content in the source file?

Q3. For footer and header, the include() and include_once()
shouldn't really matter, is this correct?

Q4. Does the file content included by include() gets parsed first,
then gets included in the calling source file? or gets included first, then gets parsed?

Q5. What is the best practice to include header/footer/contents using php?

Thanks.

NogDog

When you do an include, the PHP parser drops out of PHP mode, so there is no need to echo any plain HTML text in the included file.

page.php

<?php
include "head.html";
?>
<h1>Hello, World</h1>
<p>This is the main content of the page.</p>
<?php
include "foot.html";
?>

head.html:

<html>
<head><title>Example</title></head>
<body>

foot.html:

</bodyl>
</html>

In the above example, since you are just including non-PHP files, you can simply use [man]readfile/man instead of [man]include[/man];

If the include files contain PHP code that needs to be processed, then the included file needs to use <?php tags as needed, since when you start an included file you "drop out" of PHP mode. But any static HTML can simply be entered outside of any <?php tags:

page.php:

<?php
include "head.inc";
?>
<h1>Hello, World.</h1>

head.inc:

<html>
<head><title>Example</title></head>
<body>
<p>The current date/time is: <?php echo date('Y/m/d-H:i:s'); ?></p>

potatoCode

NogDog;10923749 wrote:
When you do an include, the PHP parser drops out of PHP mode, so there is no need to echo any plain HTML text in the included file.

Hello NogDog
Aha, that is exactly what I was confused about.
Thanks for such a good explanation :thumb:

Weedpacket

potatoCode wrote:
The reason why I'm using two seperate files in each header/footer.php is that,
I have to escape double quotes if I were to design html contents in php directly.
e.g
<?php echo "<a href=\"somelink.html\">some linke</a>" ?> 

Another thing is that this is unnecessary, for several reasons.

First, as NogDog has noted, you could simply drop out of PHP mode and go back in again afterwards; this is the preferred method for significant chunks of plain output.

?><a href="somelink.html">some linke</a><?php

Second, you could use single quotes to delimit your strings

<?php echo '<a href="somelink.html">some linke</a>' ?>

Third, you could use heredoc-quoting

<?php echo <<<STUFF
<a href="somelink.html">some linke</a>
STUFF;
?>

Fourth, you could use single quotes to delimit your attribute values

<?php echo "<a href='somelink.html'>some linke</a>" ?>

potatoCode

Aha I see.
Thanks weedpacket.

Is it better to put the <html><head>.... section in the header.php?
or have the main index.php page with header inside <div>?
e.g.
header.php

<html><head>...</head><body>

and main index.php

<?php include_once('header.php') ?>
<!-- body of cotent  -->

or,
header.php

<?php echo "header stuff" ?>

main index.php

<html><head></head><body>
<div class="header"><?php include_once('header.php') ?></div>

Which way should I go with?

NogDog

There is not necessarily a "right" or "wrong" answer. What you do want to do, however, is put as much code (including HTML text) that is going to be reused in multiple places into a single source, so that you only have to change it in one place when needed.

Personally, I tend to put my page "boilerplate" stuff into functions (or methods) in one include file (or class definition file). Then I can call them as needed after including that file.

boilerplate.php:

<?php
function head($title)
{
   $title = htmlentities($title);
   $text = <<<END
<html>
<head>
<title>$title</title>
</head>
<body>

END;
   return $text;
}

function foot()
{
   $text = <<<END
<p class='foot'>Copyright 2009 by Charles Reace</p>
</body>
</html>
END;
   return $text;
}

some_page.php:

<?php
require_once 'boilerplate.php';
echo head("This page's title");
?>
<h1>Hello, World</h1>
<p>That's all, folks.</p>
<?php echo foot(); ?>

unlucky17

I find jumping in and out of PHP to be confusing. I build all of my code entirely in PHP and echo HTML code where it's needed.

Most of the sites I build use 4 php files for each page, using includes on every page (I'll copy a blank file that just has includes when I want a new page). The build ends up looking similar to this:

index.php

<?php

include 'meta.php';
include 'header.php';

echo "Hello World.  This is the body of the index.";

include 'footer.php';

?>

meta.php

<?php

echo "<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
<meta>
</head>
<body>";

?>

header.php

<?php

echo "<div>
<img src='somelogo.gif'>
</div>";

?>

footer.php

<?php

echo "<div>
<a href='somepage.php'>Text Links</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>";

?>

I'm constantly using HTML via echo statements and all you have to remember is that you need to enclose the echo's with " ";, so I'll write that first, and then write all of the HTML between those quotes. A good tip to follow is that for anything in HTML that needs quotes, use single quotes:

<img src='someimage.gif' width='10' height='20'>

..so it doesn't confuse PHP if you throw in a " which ends the echo statement.

Use whatever you're comfortable with but this setup makes the most sense to me, so you can modify the top, bottom and meta information for your entire site with just one page, respectively. Also, typically in the pages I will call out to class methods to get all of the pertinent HTML from one file/class, and all of the PHP work (namely database work) from another file/class.

Hope that helped out.