[PHP] Pages with ids Tutorial

[nightscream]

Ok i'll post the first tutorial here, I hope it's a good one
If you are wondering how people do the url/index.php?id=News this is the tutorial for it
I hope you understand what I say in this tutorial, I'll try to make it easy.


Create your main file, index.php
create your menu, no links yet
example:

<table width="125" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr><td>Menu</td></tr>
<tr><td>News</td></tr>
<tr><td>Members</td></tr>
</table>

now go to the part of your file where you want that the content change
and put something like this

<?php
$id = $_REQUEST['id']; // this will get the id of the link, this will be explained later.
switch($id) { // make a case with the id
default: include('main.php'); //When page is loaded this will be the main content, put the content in main.php(you can change the name)
break; // close this case
case "News": include('news.php'); // The content in news.php will be called when id=News
break; // close this case
case "Members": include('members.php'); // The content in members.php will be called when id=Members
break; // close this case
} // close switch
?>

You can add more ids in there if you want.

Now go back to your menu and we are going to add the links
add this kind of link to your menu

<a href="index.php?id=ID THAT YOU WANT" target="_self">TEXT</a>

with my example it will be like below.
the id=News is equal to the case "News" in the php function

<table width="125" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr><td>Menu</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="index.php?id=News" target="_self">News</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="index.php?id=Members" target="_self">Members</a></td></tr>
</table>

This Was the tutorial, I hope you liked it and you learned something.

Nightscream

[Fedlerner]

Nice!!!
I read this one in your website :P

[Zenax]

<?php 


if( isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['page']) || isset($HTTP_POST_VARS['page']) )
{
    $page = ( isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['page']) ) ? $HTTP_GET_VARS['page'] : $HTTP_POST_VARS['page'];
    $page = htmlspecialchars($page);
}
else 
{
    $page = "";
}

switch( $page )
    {   
	
		 case "1":
		include("1.php");
	   break;
	    
         case "2":
        include("2.php");
       break;

         case "3":
        include("3.php");
       break;

         case "4":
        include("4.php");
       break;

      default:
	  include("inc/main.php");
    break;
}

?>

This is the php code I use to do it! Could you tell me what the difference is and which is better?

[t2t2t]

His code has everything on one page and uses html function for moving thru page.

[jaygreentree]

I prefer to use the code below because its more secure:

<?
if (isset($_GET['id']) && file_exists('/path/to/page/'.$_GET[id].'.php')) {
include '/path/to/page/'.$_GET[id].'.php';
} else {
include("/path/to/page/main.php");
}
?>

Then the links would looks like

<a href="index.php?id=page">Page Name</a>

[Woolie]

I'm slightly curious to know why everyone loves to use GET globals for navigation when there is no database present? What is the point? You don't gain anything, it just means unnecessary code to edit when you want to add a navigation link.

I mean, it is (usually) necessary to use them for database based content management type systems, but when I create things like that, I always try to use mod_rewrite (where possible) to make them look more friendly to the human.

Anyway, apart from that, I suppose it's a good tutorial... If you really want to waste your time making extra work for yourself, when the idea of using programming languages (especially PHP) is to make it easier for you. Ummm, does that really make sense?

[jaygreentree]

The way I posted above you just add the link to the menu and create the page. My code doesn't have to be updated everytime like the ones that use case. That's the reason I use mine.

[nightscream]

that's true but I use this way maybe i'll try yours, just a tutorial;)

[dest581]

For codes where it just changes x to x.php, make sure that you filter out any requests containing ../ or http://

[nahsorhseda]

nice one ! i alwasys used to wonder what the id stands for