Re: Question about template systems

Hi, > First post here, I'm in the process of learning PHP , I'm digesting a few > books as we speak. > I'm working on a content heavy website that provides a lot of information, a > template system would be great and so i've been looking at ways to create > dynamic data with a static navigation system. > > So far, using the require_once(); function seems to fit the bill in order to > bring in the same header html file on each page. > I've also looked at Smartys template system. If you've looked at require_once() and it "fits the bill", then chances are that Smarty might be overkill slightly. > I wondered how you folk would go about creating a template system ? I wouldn't (or at least, I wouldn't advise it). Use one that's already out there and save your self some (a lot of) work. > My second question might be me jumping the gun here, I haven't come across > this part in my book but i'll ask about it anyway.  I often see websites > that have a dynamic body and static header, and their web addresses end like > this: "index.php?id=445" where 445 i presume is some file reference. > What is this called ? I don't know of the specific name, but the URL is simply passing an identifier (445) to the script (index.php). This ID could be the ID of a record in a database, which is then retrieved and shown to the user. > It seems like the system i'm after but it doesn't > appear in my book,  If anyone could let me know what this page id subject is > called i can do some research on the subject. Erm, don't know of the specific name, except that it's a GET parameter (so I guess I do...). Everything following the question mark is collectively known as the query string. You can retrieve these by examining the $_GET variable. You will aalso find some useful things, in $_SERVER. Eg: <pre> <?php print_r($_GET); print_r($_SERVER); ?> -- Richard Heyes HTML5 Canvas graphing for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari: http://www.rgraph.net (Updated February 28th)