Suppressing menu items when page is current

MartynInManila

Hi again, still learning . . .

1) I want to build a menu where the current page option is suppressed from view.

I have been given a piece of code that is quite simple in itself if the menu is short but if the menu is long then it uses a lot of space:

The code I have been given is:


<?php 
    if(strpos($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"],"index.php")>0){  ?>
<?php }else{ ?>
    <li><a href="index.php">Index text</a></li>
<?php } ?>

<?php 
    if(strpos($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"],"page2.php")>0){  ?>
<?php }else{ ?>
    <li><a href="page2.php">page2 text</a></li>
<?php } ?>

I can put this around every menu item but I think there must be a better way of achieving the objective.

Can someone give me a better way that needs less code?

RELATED TO THIS

2) How to suppress the landing page (in this case index.php) from being displayed in the menu list when a website first opens, i.e. when the landing page has no page name displayed in the URL?

leatherback

Hm.. To start with... You can just use <?php once, then your whole code. Then close of with ?>. Absolutely no need to open en close PhP statements on each siongle line and statement.

Then.. We cannot see how you have organized your site. There is an easier way of doing this, that is 99% certain. But you will need to give us more information:

What do your links look like
Do you perform some form of URL rewriting (e.g., through and HTACCESS file) or do the actual pages index.php, index2.php etc exist? In other words: Is there some way in which you can tell which page you are actually showing without looking at the $_SERVER variable? (How do you e.g., decide which content to show for the site).
Once we know how hat is organized, you can get better advice on how you can arrange your menu, including how to suppress certain elements from the menu.

MartynInManila

Thank you for you rapid reply.

At the moment there is no .htaccess associated with this site.

Removing the need to open and close the php tag for each menu item would help for sure but I am not sure I know how to format the individual lines if one php tag open/close spans the whole menu . . .

Only one additional page "Questions & Answers" how-do-i.php has been actually created, to test out the page layout, menu php function etc. But the menu reflects what will be there in the final version.

The $_SERVER variable was just in the piece of code I was given, I do not know if it is the most appropriate code/variable to use or not . . . the objective is to suppress the menu item in the displayed menu, compared to whatever the current page being viewed is.

Here is the link to the site http://www.pgyc.org/solar/index.php

Note: the site under development has nothing to do with the upper level www.pgyc.org website, it is just the most convenient place for me to make it available for testing of layout in different browsers across the Internet - I am the person who ordinarily keeps the www.pgyc.org website up to date . . . it is where I started life as a website programmer so please excuse any errors you might find there if you go exploring.

Finally, I can't test the second question I have because index.php is always shown in this case. I was just thinking ahead to when the actual URL is active and when someone finds it through a link that will not necessarily include index.php

I am thinking I can actually use .htaccess to get around this such that the landing page will always show index.php no matter how a website visitor finds/arrives.

I sincerely appreciate your devotion to this my small challenge.

Martyn

leatherback

It is all really dependent on how all will be organized. In any case.. You typically know which page you are loading. At that point you could set a $menu_suppress variable and name that after the page you are loading. That would be the first thing to decide I'd say. How are you going to know which page you are on. I am personally nog a fan of using preset variables, such as $_SERVER. I rather set one myself somewhere.

// like this:

<?php 

if(strpos($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"],"index.php")>0)
  {
  }else{
echo "<li><a href=\"index.php\">Index text</a></li>
}

?>

If you build the menu like this:

$menu = array(
0 => array(
  'label'=>'menu1',
  'url' => 'link url'),
1 => array(
  'label'=>'menu2',
  'url' => 'link url')
);

// etc

You could use a foreach look:

foreach($menu as $menuitem)
  {
  if($menuitem['label'] <> $menu_suppress)
    {
    echo <li><a href=\"".$menuitem['url']."\">".$menuitem['label']."</a></li>
    }    

  }

Naturally, a database might be usefull too..

MartynInManila

Thank you much for those pointers, I can see how that works. Will try it and get back to you if I get stuck somewhere.

I will experiment with using a database as suggested . . . I really don't understand MySQL yet but life should be a learning experience and having a project to achieve is the best motivator.

Thanks again.

MartynInManila

By the way, my original question 2, about getting the filename to appear for the landing page when a visitor hits the site for the first time . . .

As a workaround I made a trial .htaccess and used two statements:


DirectoryIndex notarealfilename.php

Redirect 301 /notarealfilename.php http://mywebsite.com/landingpage.php

It works; and I can make the notarealfilename.php look like something interesting to the visitor who is considering to click on an inbound link.

I am getting to enjoy this work, so many different ways to achieve one objective. 🙂

Thanks again

leatherback

Note that in the HTACCESS you can also add a variable to the URL, which your script can access through the $GET[] array:

Redirect 301 /notarealfilename.php http://mywebsite.com/index.php?page=3

===

echo $_GET['page'];

This you can then use to determine which page you are on.