On Wed, April 25, 2007 12:16 am, Paul Lesniewski wrote:
> Apologies for the late reply.
> On 4/14/07, Alan in Toronto <Alantoronto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Fri, April 13, 2007 8:52 pm, Paul Lesniewski wrote:
>> > On 4/13/07, Alan in Toronto <Alantoronto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >> Currently I'm working on a site that is located in a sub-directory of my web
>> >> hosting
>> >> account. When it's complete, I'll move it to the server of the non-profit group
>> >> I'm
>> >> doing this for, where presumably it will live at the web root (directly under
>> the
>> >> domain name). Ideally I'd like to have to change some central variable rather
>> than
>> >> have to change paths on every page or in every script.
>>
>> > Much of this depends on WHAT you are working on.
>>
>> It's a script to enable the site navigation menu to live in a separate HTML file,
>> currently Menu.htm. I want to keep most of the PHP in a separate file or files,
>> such
>> as currently in Menu.php. That way the content web pages are mostly straight HTML
>> with just a small amount of PHP at the top such as the includes.
>>
>> Each web page will ultimately grab Menu.htm via PHP include. This enables easier
>> maintenance of the navigation menu, as only that one file needs editing when new
>> pages are added or links changed. When the file is included, PHP will also
>> identify
>> the currently-viewed page by writing an attribute into the Anchor of the nav menu
>> link to that currently-viewed page.
>
> FWIW, have a look at SM's php_self() function to see how we try to get
> the current page request in a reliable manner. That value is useful
> when you need to do things like indicate what page is currently being
> viewed.
>
>> > It also depends where you are needing to use this kind of code.
>>
>> The include is inserted in each content web page where I want the navigation menu
>> to
>> appear. It would be good to do this in such a way that the include_once statement
>> always uses the same path, so that it doesn't need to be different for web pages
>> calling the include from varying levels of nested directories. IOW, the site will
>> have content pages in directories and sub-directories and it would simplify site
>> creation and addititions if the include_once line were always the same and did not
>> have to change depending upon what directory level the content web page resides
>> in.
>
> Each page request is stateless, so you always have to make some sort
> of determination as to where other files are that you need for every
> page requested. That's, in the SM world, the determination of SM_PATH
> near the beginning of each page request.
>
>> Using your "home" directory variable idea, at the top of each content web page
>> (before the doctype declaration) I have this (yes, I realize I can name SM_PATH
>> whatever I want, but for now that makes it obvious to me what I'm doing and that
>> it
>> was your suggestion):
>>
>> <?php
>> define('SM_PATH','../');
>
> Right. This has to, of course, be maintained on a per-file basis
> unless you do something more complex like SM 1.5.x does.
>
>> $file_name = basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
>
> If you don't need to worry about portability, this is fine, but see my
> comment about php_self(). I'd also recommend a better variable name.
>
>> include_once(SM_PATH . 'CSSetc/Menu.php');
>> ?>
>>
>> Later in the page, where I want the menu to appear, I have this:
>>
>> <?php echo $nav; ?>
>>
>> Menu.php contains, in addition to other code, this line:
>> $nav = file_get_contents("CSSetc/Menu.htm");
>>
>> Menu.htm is just the navigation menu, HTML only.
>
> Then there is no reason to go round-about by reading the file into a
> variable and echoing it. Remove all this stuff and simply use one
> line where the menu should be output:
>
> <?php require(SM_PATH . 'CSSetc/Menu.htm'); ?>
>
> If the menu needs any dynamic stuff, make it a php file.
>
>> > define your own "home" directory variable (constant is better)
>> > and use it EVERYWHERE you refer to a file in PHP.
>>
>> > here is how SM does it. Look at /src/compose.php:
>> > First thing it does is define the relative path to the main
>> > application directory. After that, all files are included using that
>> > constant.
>>
>> /src/compose.php contains:
>> define('SM_PATH','../');
>>
>> /plugins/newmail/newmail.php contains:
>> define('SM_PATH','../../');
>>
>> Thanks, I've now added something similar to my pages, and it works, so that's one
>> issue you've solved. So, I need to ensure that in that "define" line I add another
>> "../" each time a page is in a lower-level sub-directory. I'm not missing
>> something,
>> that there's some automated way to accomplish that, am I? I assume that when
>> adding
>> that "define" line to each page that you must first know how many directory levels
>> deep the page will be, so as to add the right number of "../"
>
> Yup.
>
>> > if you have things like links and image tags in plain HTML, then just
>> > make sure all the files those point to are done with RELATIVE links.
>>
>> Yes, that's what I always do. e.g. I always use references such as
>> link rel="stylesheet" href="../../CSSetc/Mainsite.css"
>> That's fine for linking a stylesheet or images, but is a problem in the Menu.htm
>> because it gets included into content web pages that live in varying directory
>> levels. So a relative link in Menu.htm that works from one directory deep doesn't
>> work from two directories deep. Your sqm_baseuri() idea might be that way to deal
>> with that.
>
> Yes. Although in a simple environment, you can actually just use
> SM_PATH (or whatever you choose to call it) - that makes it pretty
> easy.
>
>> > If you need to calculate hrefs and things like that in the PHP code,
>> > it can be a little more complicated, but doesn't have to be for simple
>> > sites. See how SM calculates $base_uri in the sqm_baseuri() function
>> > in strings.php in STABLE (note that $PHP_SELF is constructed in the
>> > function php_self()). In most simple cases, you can simply include a
>> > "startup" file (after you define the constant pointing to your main
>> > app dir per above), and in that startup file, just set another
>> > constant that contains the base URI for use in hrefs and such things
>> > throughout the code. Then you only have to change that value when you
>> > move the site.
>>
>> Sorry, could you spell that out a little more step-by-step? I think I understand
>> the
>> concept, of specifying a base location in one single file and then having that
>> value
>> written into each content page. I'm just not clear on what I need to do to create
>> all that.
>
> In one (each) of the requested pages:
>
> <?php
> define('SM_PATH', '../../');
> require(SM_PATH . 'startup.php');
> ?>
> .... rest of HTML here....
>
>
> In startup.php, which resides in the main site directory:
>
> <?php
> global $base_path = SM_PATH;
> $base_path = SM_PATH;
> ....
>
>
> Back in the HTML in any of the requested pages:
>
> For more info, <a href="<?php echo $base_path;
> ?>CSSetc/Mainsite.css">click here</a>.
>
>
>> I had wondered about using BASE HREF in each web page's HTML head.
>
> This could be even more graceful (less PHP intrusion into the HTML)
> than the above idea, but still very much the same thing.
>
>> To avoid having
>> to change the BASE HREF in each file once the site is complete and is moved, I
>> wondered if there's a way to use PHP to write the BASE HREF into each file by
>> getting the value from a central location. Then when the site moves, I'd only have
>> to change that value in the one file, and PHP would insert it automatically into
>> the
>> content pages. For instance, maybe something like this?:
>> <base href="<?php echo $site_base ?>">
>>
>> Perhaps that's what you're doing too, but being such a PHP newbie I couldn't
>> figure
>> out what specifically to write and do to execute your suggestion.
>>
>>
>> Also, is there a reason why PHP comments in SM files begin with slash and two
>> asterisks?
>
> One-liners start with //
> Multiple-line comments start with /* and end with */
>
>> I know there's some difference between single quotes versus double quotes, but in
>> many PHP examples they seem to be used interchangeably. For instance, I was using
>> this include line:
>> include_once("CSSetc/Menu.php");
>> But I see that you use single quotes instead. Would it be better for me to change
>> such references to single quotes?
>
> Double quotes are interpolated. That is, if you put a variable name
> in the quoted string, it is changed to the variable value with the
> string is output. Single quotes echo the string as is, so the dollar
> sign would have no special meaning. There is thought by some to be a
> performance difference due to saving the interpolation cycles when the
> string is processed, but it seems that real-world testing doesn't bear
> much difference... it's more of a stylistic and clean-code thing.
>
>> Thanks for your help. I'm already further ahead thanks to you, as usual.
>
> np
>
> -paul
Thank you Paul. You've given me a lot more to think about as I build this script. I
appreciate the advice!
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