[RESOLVED] getting PHP running inside a html page

Joerid

Hello,
when i'm trying the code example of the PHP foreach loop on the website www.W3schools.com,
instead of the expected result, i get the following output in my browser:

";} ?>

In fact, i have this problem for every foreach loop that i try to run inside a html page.
If i put the same foreach-loop inside a plain php-file, it shows a correct result in the browser.
Is there something that i need to configure to get this running?

I have eclipse pdt installed , and (did an attempt) to install the zend debugger on top of it(from http://downloads.zend.com/pdt/server-debugger/). It gave me some trouble, because the zend debugger so-file seemed not to be compatible with my php version 5.3
So i followed the advice on the zend forum, and installed the whole thing (zend server i think).
I had to manually add a module [Zend] with some parameters , and copy the debugger-so-file into the correct directory, to get it running.

I don't know if the above installation broke something?
(during the Zend installation, the package manager told there was a conflict, and some packages like PHP-mod needed to be removed. I agreed with what was proposed to be able to continue).

dalecosp

Your server software must be instructed to use the PHP interpreter on *.html files. For Apache (with PHP as a DSO rather than CGI), it's the following in httpd.conf:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html

HTH,

bradgrafelman

Or, better yet, don't force the PHP interpreter to be invoked for every .html file and instead name the file to have a .php file extension (since it's a PHP file, not just an HTML file).

Also make sure that you're always using the full "<?php" opening tag and never the "<?" or "<?=" short-open tags.

Joerid

Thanks for the quick advice.
I will try httpd.conf adaptation, and will put this thread to solved once done.

However, as a beginner i do have some questions:

How the * should i know this? These kind of things are not mentioned in the w3schools, nor in the PHP-book from O'Reilly, which i'm following right now.
The solution from bradgrafelman seems to me, not correct:
i'm writing a Html file, and to get things done, i need to include once and a while some php-code. Why should i give my file then a php-extension. It is not plain php-code!

bradgrafelman

Joerid wrote:
1. How the * should i know this? These kind of things are not mentioned in the w3schools, nor in the PHP-book from O'Reilly, which i'm following right now.

Not really sure how to answer that. How did you install PHP and Apache in the first place? For me, it was fairly clear when I first started dabbling in PHP since I had to add the line to the httpd.conf file that told Apache to parse ".php" files differently.

Joerid wrote:
2. The solution from bradgrafelman seems to me, not correct:
i'm writing a Html file, and to get things done, i need to include once and a while some php-code. Why should i give my file then a php-extension. It is not plain php-code!

Why should you? Here are a few reasons:

Of course it's not "plain php-code". PHP is a server-side scripting language, so you of course have to output something that's client-based (such as HTML, a client-side scripting language). If all PHP scripts were "plain php-code", then you couldn't use PHP as a web scripting language since there'd be no client-side scripting to output.
Just because you give a file a .php extension doesn't mean that you have to use PHP more often than HTML.
It's commonly understood (due to points #1 and #2 above) that .php files can/will contain data that isn't PHP code.

EDIT: Also, I could have used your logic to argue against using .html as well; if you have even one small snippet of PHP code mixed in with HTML, then why should you give it a .html extension - it's not just plain HTML code!

(And no, I don't believe in using the cute little "phtml" "shtml" etc. extensions either, before you ask. :p)

Joerid

Hello bradgrafelman,
thank you for the clear explanation.

I thought dalecosp 's solution (adding the "AddType" in the httpd.conf file ) would be simple , but i was wrong.

since i'm using apache2, the file httpd.conf is almost empty.
Do i need to add the AddType in the apache2.conf instead?

when i installed the zend component, most of it was installed under /usr/local/zend.
So if i display a phpinfo() in the browser, most of it is reffering to that directory.(including the php.ini file). So i was wondering if adding the "AddType" to the configfile /etc/apache2/httpd.conf would have any effect?

i also found on the internet some sugestions to change something in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5, but i do not know if this is correct , and what the relation is between all those files. I'm eager to learn though.

Btw, how do i find back which conf- files are used/loaded, and which are not ?

What did i start using php?:

I'm using ubuntu meerkat,

i started reading the O'reilly book (Learning php,mysql and javascript)
. It gave me small sample code.
I wanted to try it out, and installed PHP( via synaptic) and apache2(apt-get)
i tried those examples out , and put them under /var/www. That anoyed me after a while,
and i followed the instructions to be able to put my files where i want them (f.e. /home/Joeri/public_html/*
in the book they started talking about IDE's. I already had eclipse, so i installed eclipse PDT by downloading the plugin in eclipse.

when i started to experiment with the code, i found out that i made mistakes, and i had no possibility to check out what i was doing wrong. So i read a little on the internet, and found out you can use zenddebugger.

I tried to install the zenddebugger.so i found on the forum, but after installation, it told me the debugger was incompatible with the PHP5.3 i was using.

So i read a little more, and the solution was not available for free anymore it seems. The only compatible so-files seems to be in the full zend-package. So i followed the advice on the forum of zend, and installed the whole thing.

The scary thing about this installation was, that it mentioned there were some conflicts, and it needed to remove some files (like php-mod).I agreed to remove those files to be able to continue.( i noted down which files, in case i needed to reinstall them again :-) )

After the installation of the zendprogram, i noticed that the output of the phpinfo() function did not gave me the same information back. (before the installation, the php.ini and other files were taken from the php directory, and after installation everything in the output was pointing to /usr/local/zend). I don't know how that got changed. I was happy it still worked.
Although i'm not pleased to work like that, because i notice i lose control over my system , and once my system get's messed up too much ,the only thing i can do(with my limited knowledge), is reinstall Ubuntu and start over again.

nawrik

Joerid,

At this early stage really wouldn't bother giving yourself the headache of manually installing a stack.

I believe your a linux user (?) - try XAMPP - it makes the install of Apache, PHP and MySQL seamless allowing you to concentrate on what is important - that is learning PHP.

Hope this helps.

Joerid

like dalecosp suggested,
i have added the ".html" to the AddType line nad that fixed my problem for the html pages.
This was not located in the httpd.conf file, but i found it in the /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf

However, bradgrafelman's point of view clarified some things, and i will not use the .html extension that often anymore.

Nawrik,
that is what i forgot to mention in my "history": the first thing i installed on my Ubuntu system, was "LAMP" via tasksel.
But with that alone , you do not have a proper environment(i.e. IDE) to write your PHP code, so that is why i went a step further and installed eclipse pdt.

bradgrafelman

nawrik wrote:
At this early stage really wouldn't bother giving yourself the headache of manually installing a stack.

Eh, my personal opinion is the polar opposite. Why learn how to use a scripting language and backend(s) when you don't even know how to install it/them? To me, that's like trying to join NASCAR before learning how to drive.

Add the fact that none of those pre-packaged *AMP thingies should be used in a production environment and now you've totally lost my interest (since I believe in the concept of trying to make your testing/development environment match your production environment as closely as possible).

Heck, if you really wanted to be lazy, you could just type "sudo aptitude install php5" and let Ubuntu's rather extensive app repo's take care of the rest. :p

Joerid wrote:
But with that alone , you do not have a proper environment(i.e. IDE) to write your PHP code

Eh, that's a little subjective, really. To me, my "proper" environment consists of nothing other than PHP, Notepad2 (which has replaced Micro$oft's crappy Notepad app on all Windows systems I use), Mountain Dew, and the PHP manual. :p

dalecosp

bradgrafelman;10971501 wrote:
Eh, my personal opinion is the polar opposite. Why learn how to use a scripting language and backend(s) when you don't even know how to install it/them? To me, that's like trying to join NASCAR before learning how to drive.

Well made, and perhaps responsible for PHP's reputation as an insecure platform. I'm thinking that Real Programmers 'RTFM' regardless of what language they're choosing to write in.

Eh, that's a little subjective, really. To me, my "proper" environment consists of nothing other than PHP, Notepad2 (which has replaced Micro$oft's crappy Notepad app on all Windows systems I use), Mountain Dew, and the PHP manual. :p

Hee hee, I replace mine with Notepad++ ... although I thought it was cool when I had Cygwin, bash, and NaNo installed on my old Win2K lappy ... hee hee, I could forget I was using Windoze at all. 😃

dalecosp

bradgrafelman;10971353 wrote:
(And no, I don't believe in using the cute little "phtml" "shtml" etc. extensions either, before you ask. :p)

Hee hee, when I pasted that line my from httpd.conf, I erased ".asp", too.

Of course, not all my security is S.B.O., but nothing wrong with a little misdirection now and again, IMHO....