Dynamic HTML Pages

peeling · 11-12-2006, 08:49 PM

Hi,

How do I create dynamic HTML pages? I need to keep a few pages HTML, but there's a few dynamic components which are also essential on the pages. Don't tell me to use frames. Also, the dynamic content comes from a mysql database.

Will.Spencer · 11-12-2006, 10:56 PM

Don't use frames.

Most dynamic content is delivered from Content Management Systems (CMSs), but it sounds more like you want to build your own CMS.

If that is true, then the answer to "How do I build Dynamic HTML Pages" is usually "use PHP."

PHP integrates especially well with MySQL.

Inside PHP, the functions which you will want to pay special attention to include:

mysql_connect()
db_select()
nysql_query()
mysql_fetch_row()
mysql_fetch_array()
mysql_close()

peeling · 11-13-2006, 12:18 AM

Problem is, my client is using PHP pages which get their data from a mysql database. But he has a lot of html pages which are very well indexed in google. He does not want to scrap the pages. He just wants to add some dynamic content to the html pages, along with their existing static content. I'm pretty sure it can be done, which is why I told him it can be done.

Now I want to know how it can be done.

Will.Spencer · 11-13-2006, 09:20 AM

You can call PHP from within HTML pages.

You have to configure httpd.conf to tell Apache to look for PHP in files with the .html extension.

This is done with an AddType declaration:

Code:

    AddType application/x-httpd-php .shtml

You then just have to put the PHP into the HTML files.

Code:

<?php
/*
This is PHP code.
*/
?>

Alternatively, I have also seen people call external PHP code using JavaScript, which seems to be interesting:

Code:

<script src='http://www.example.com/example.php' type="text/javascript"></script>

Another alternative is to use .php files and embed the existing HTML within them.

Code:

<?php
/* PHP goes here */
?>               
<!-- HTML goes here -->
<?php
/* More PHP goes here */
?>

peeling · 11-13-2006, 08:21 PM

Hi Will,

Thank you for the answers. I did some digging on my own and seems you can use fopen in PHP to generate static HTML pages from database queries. I won't post links to the code here, but you can do a google search for "static html pages using fopen". And don't ask me how I ended up there. I can understand a bit of PHP, but I can't write my own code.

I have been playing round with it for a few hours and finally got it working. Works real good. I needed to set up a cron job to refresh the html pages, but I guess it's worth it.

Will.Spencer · 11-13-2006, 08:56 PM

fopen() makes sense. I've always just closed the PHP tag, used some HTML, and opened a new PHP tag.

I'm not much of a PHP coder, but fopen() comes from C.

gemini181 · 12-05-2006, 05:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

You can call PHP from within HTML pages.

You have to configure httpd.conf to tell Apache to look for PHP in files with the .html extension.

This is done with an AddType declaration:

Code:

    AddType application/x-httpd-php .shtml

...

I need to experiment with this on shared hosting. Do you know if most 'standard' Unix servers are already configured this way?

Thank you.

Will.Spencer · 12-05-2006, 05:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gemini181

I need to experiment with this on shared hosting. Do you know if most 'standard' Unix servers are already configured this way?

Most that I have seen use .html, I'm one of the few people using the .shtml extension.

Code:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .shtml