[Gllug] OT - simple HTML query

[James McGuigan]

Dylan wrote:
> Hi List,
> 
> I'm coding a small web site which has the ubiquitous left-side menu. I'm 
> doing my level best to avoid frames, tables and scripts. Since the 
> items in the menu are liable to be updated fairly often I'd ideally 
> like to keep a single copy of the HTML for the menu and simply have it 
> loaded or imported to the appropriate point in the page. Is this 
> possible? If so, how should I look at doing it?
> 
> Cheers
> Dylan

Have you considered using PHP (assuming its available on your webserver).

# index.htm
This is my menu:
<?php include('menu.htm'); ?>
An now for the rest of the page


# menu.htm
<ul>
<li>Menu Item 1</li>
<li>Menu Item 2</li>
<li>Menu Item 3</li>
</ul>


# .htaccess
AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html




My usual system for doing templates in PHP is to declare a set of variables in the 
called file (index.htm), such as  $title, $subtitle, $content  and so on, include the 
main template file, which is a HTML file with embedded php tags to print out those 
variables in the correct place. There are half a dozen other ways of doing it but 
this method works for me.

As for menus, I usually end up declaring them as a PHP array and have a small 
function/loop to print out the menu code (testing if the menu link points to the 
current page - giving it a different CSS style if so).

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      - James McGuigan

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