[RESOLVED] PHP Includes Inside a MySQL DB

petermcphee

Hi there,

I'm in the process of moving all my content from static files into a MySQL DB.

What I've done is create a table, which has a field called "content" that contains all the body text for each page. I can get the text in and out of the DB fine with PHP, however, I've run into a bit of a hurdle with my include files that occur mid-content.

For example, in various places throughout the site I've placed an include file called "ad-block", which displays whatever I want inside that file - a Google Ad, a notification or rotating ads.

When this data is retrieved from the DB the PHP include statement is not re-executed so all I see is the include statement itself.

As a workaround I thought I could forget the rotating ad and just use a static chunk of code at each place and then if I needed to replace it I could just use the replace command in MySQL to do a bulk find/replace. But seems MySQL (i.e. PHPMyAdmin) doesn't like big chunks of Google code with <-" inside.

Any suggestions to this problem would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Pete.

Weedpacket

It's not re-executed because all that is retrieved from the database is a string. PHP isn't going to treat any part of it as code unless you explicitly tell it to. But I wouldn't recommend that here - that way lies some bad juju.

I'd suggest you search for the critical text yourself and substitute the intended replacement (and that way lies creating yet another templating system).

petermcphee

Thanks for getting back!

Yeah, I tried the find/replace with some SQL but it throws up errors as inside my finding/replacing I have lots of " < ! characters. I guess I could try PHP and the htmlspecialchars() function?

But are you saying that you can tell PHP to execute what it grabs from MySQL (if of course I declare it with <?php ?>)?

Pete.

Weedpacket

petermcphee wrote:
Yeah, I tried the find/replace with some SQL

I was thinking more along the lines of using PHP for that.

(if of course I declare it with <?php ?>)

[man]eval[/man]

petermcphee

Thanks for the eval tip...didn't know about that. I def won't use it though...all my data will have to be echoed in PHP and all " ' values escaped. Seems a bit of a pain.

Luckily I created a small gui using edit/replace SQL and works a treat.

Thanks for the tips.

Weedpacket

Yeah; eval is really kind of there because it was easier to put it in than not. As Rasmus Ledorf put it "If eval is the answer, you're asking the wrong question." Or something like that.