Load PHP and HTML code to a PHP variable echoed in a <div>

Question

Here is my case. I have the following script:

<?php
// ... other code ...
switch($_GET['request'])    {
        case "firstPage":
            $file = APP_ROOT. "pages/firstPage.php";
            $hndle = fopen($file,"r");
            $right_column = fread($hndle, filesize($file));
            fclose($hndle);
            break;
        case "secondPage":
            $file = APP_ROOT. "pages/secondPage.php";
            $hndle = fopen($file,"r");
            $right_column = fread($hndle, filesize($file));
            fclose($hndle);
            break;
    }
}
?>
<div id="right_column">
    <?php echo $right_column;?>
</div>
// ... other code ...

Depending on the value of the $_GET['request'] I am assigning to the variable $right_column the content of a php file. Then, I echo that variable in the last div. The firstPage.php and secondPage.php files contain mixed html and php code. I look for a solution like the 'partial' in Zend. Thanks

Answer 1

It would probably be simpler if you set a variable indicating which PHP file to include, and then rather than reading the file, just include it. For example:

<?php
// ... other code ...
switch($_GET['request'])    {
        case "firstPage":
            $file = APP_ROOT. "pages/firstPage.php";
            break;
        case "secondPage":
            $file = APP_ROOT. "pages/secondPage.php";
            break;
    }
}
?>
<div id="right_column">
    <?php include($file);?>
</div>
// ... other code ...

If your firstPage.php and secondPage.php files only had HTML, what you're doing would work. If it has PHP, then you'll need to include() it; or you could eval() it but that is again doing more work than you need.

Answer 2

First of all , your code is horrible, it should be something like :

$pages = array(
   'firstPage'   => 'pages/firstPage.php',
   'secondPage'  => 'pages/secondPage.php'
);

$request = 'firstPage';
if ( array_key_exits($_GET, 'request') 
 &&  array_key_exists($pages, $_GET['request']) )
{
   $request = $_GET['request'];
}
?>
<div id="right_column">
    <?php include  APP_ROOT . $pages[ $request ]; ?>
</div>

An please read http://codeangel.org/articles/simple-php-template-engine.html , you might find this interesting. It should explain to you , how you can easily take advantage of php's native templating capabilities.

Answer 3

Actually, reading and dumping your file is not a solution. You are just displaying code to your end-user.

What you need is parse the PHP file and display the result. You can do it in 2 ways:

First, intead of

 $file = APP_ROOT. "pages/firstPage.php";
 $hndle = fopen($file,"r");
 $right_column = fread($hndle, filesize($file));
 fclose($hndle);

You can do:

$right_column = include(APP_ROOT . "pages/firstPage.php");

So, your firstPage.php must RETURN the code. Something like this:

// firstPage.php
return "my html";

But you also can include it like this:

<div id="right_column">
    <?php include(APP_ROOT . "pages/firstPage.php"); ?>
</div>

Or, you can use the ob_get_contents. PHP has a nice documentation about how to use it.

I'd use include for your case.

Answer 4

It seems to me that you could program by convention rather than have an ever increasing switch statement:

<?php
// ... other code ...

$file = '';
if (isset($_GET['request'])) {
    $safeFileName = sanitizeRequestForFileName($_GET['request']);
    $file = APP_ROOT. 'pages/' . $safeFileName . '.php';
}
?>
<div id="right_column">
    <?php 
        if (file_exists($file)) {
            include($file);
        }
    ?>
</div>
// ... other code ...