using variable in URL in "include" command in PHP

dnshosting

I name an "include" for my PHP page and the location needs to include a variable such as:
include ('/home/httpd/www_mysite_com/htdocs/www.$sld.$tld/.styles.xml');
When I don't use the variables in the include like this it works:
include ('/home/httpd/www_mysite_com/htdocs/www.myhomesite.com/.styles.xml');

However, I'm using this page to feed multiple other pages and I'd really like to include a variable in the specified location for the include. Can this be done? How?

dalecosp

Yes, but we might need to see code. You may wish to look on the web for "PHP Global Variables", or something like that.

Old PHP usage was something like this:

echo "<a href='http://somethinghere.tld/some/path/$var/$var2'>Click here</a>\n";

So, $var and $var2 might have come from the URL, and these variables had global scope. This was pretty dangerous though.

If you want to do something like the above now, you should do something kind of like this:

if (isset($_GET['var'])) {
   $var = $_GET['$var'];
}
if (isset($_GET['var2'])) {
   $var2 = $_GET['$var2'];
}
echo "<a href='http://somethinghere.tld/some/path/$var/$var2'>Click here</a>\n";

Technically, it may be even more tricky, but this might get you going (it's safer, for example to use filter_input() in some cases, and there are security issues involved in a straight assignment ($foo = $_GET['foo']) without doing some type checking or other checking of user-generated input.

dnshosting

If you could help me quickly resolve this, I'd be happy to make some reasonable payment for your time. I'm sure that I explained myself poorly as a result of knowing very little PHP and what learned was from copying a website built 12 years ago.

A more complete explanation is that I have a series of xml files on my server and depending on a variable "$domain", I want to "include" the XML file data into my PHP page so that the PHP page can complete the processing. However, the "include" doesn't work with a variable in the URL. I don't know what a "$_GET" command does or how it works. In short, here's the "include" with the variable "$domain" and the 2 line after that are a sample of bringing the XML data into PHP.

include ('/home/httpd/www_mysite_com/wwwsites/www.$domain/styles.xml');
$styles = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr);
$stylesheet_no=$styles->stylesheet_no;

Can we take this conversation private and make an arrangement?

dnshosting

Hi dalecosp, I think that I found the solution so you can hold off further work. Thanks

traq

dnshosting;11036331 wrote:
However, the "include" doesn't work with a variable in the URL …

They certainly do.

Your problem might be that you're using a single-quoted string, so those aren't "variables" - they're just a dollar sign and letters. Double-quoted strings will be parsed for variables:

<?php

// literal string. no variables!
include ('/home/httpd/www_mysite_com/htdocs/www.$sld.$tld/.styles.xml');

// parsed string.  variables!
include ("/home/httpd/www_mysite_com/htdocs/www.$sld.$tld/.styles.xml");

As you can see, using a code editor with syntax highlighting helps make this sort of mistake more obvious.