Being able to include other
files into your HTML code, or
for your PHP scripts, is a
useful thing. The include(
) function
allows you do this.
Suppose you have a text file
that you want to include in a web
page that you've already got up
and running. You could copy and
paste the text from the file
straight into you HTML. Or you
could use the include( ) function
As an example for you to try,
there are two files amongst the
ones you downloaded (in
the scripts folder), called include.php and textfile.txt.
Load up the one called include.php.
Now take a look at the code for
this page:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Include files</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H3>Normal text here </H3>
Normal text written in a HTML
Editor
<H3>Include File here</H3>
<?PHP
include "textfile.txt" ; ?>
</ BODY>
</ HTML >
Our PHP code is in red. Here it
is:
<?PHP
include "textfile.txt" ;
?>
So in between PHP script tags,
type the word include.
After the word include, type the
name of the file you want to
include on your page. Your
filename can either go after a
space, and between quotation
marks, or you can put it in
round brackets (again, with the
quotes).
As well as including text,
you can include HTML. This can
save you lots of work. For
example, a web page typically
contains a menu bar, with links
to other areas of your site.
Something like this:
Suppose you decide to add a new
section to your site. The new
page should be like this:
If your site
contains lots of pages, that
would mean having to amend the
HTML of all of them. A painful
and dreaded task! Instead, use
the include( ) function.
To see how it works, load up
the page called links.php that
is among the files you
downloaded (in the scripts
folder): you should see the
first menu bar. This has the
include line, that points to
another file - linksPage.txt
(this is also in the scripts
folder).
If you open up the text file
called linksPage.txt, you'll see
that it's just a HTML table. To
get this table into the PHP page
called links.php, we just did
this:
<?PHP include "linksPage.txt" ?>
The point is, if we had the
include line on all pages of out
site, and we had to add a new
section, we could just change
the text file linksPage.txt.
This change would then mean that
all the pages in the site would
be updated!
Try it yourself. Add the
following line to the page
called linksPage.txt.
Put it between the TABLE tags
<TR>
<TD
height="30" valign="middle"
bgcolor="#FFFFCC">
<a
href="links.php">New Section</a>
</TD>
</TR>
Save the page, and then load
up links.php again.
You should see a new section
added to your menu bar.
Including Scripts
You can also use the include(
) function for scripts. You
could include those valuable
error checking functions that
you've stored in one PHP file.
Or just use it to cut down on
the amount of code in the page.
As an example, load up the
page called includeScript.php (in
the scripts folder that you
downloaded). The code is
quite simple. It's just this:
<?PHP
include "myOtherScript.php";
print "This was printed from the
includeScript.php";
print "<BR>";
doPrint( );
?>
The above script uses include
to include another PHP script -
myOtherScript.php (also in the
scripts folder). The function
called doPrint() is in
myOtherScript.php. If you open
that file, you'll see it's just
this:
<?PHP
function doPrint( ) {
print "This was printed from the
myOtherScript.php";
}
?>
Load up the page called includeScript.php in
your browser. You should see two
lines printed out.
So, include is
a very useful function – one of
the most useful inbuilt PHP
functions available to you!
