Creating dynamic pages for a set of PHP results.

Question

making dynamic pages from results

The options open to me and how I would go about these different options.

I have a compare page you input a number of things and it then sends that information through POST,

compare.php > sends to results.php

From here PHP does all the magic stuff of comparing the inputs and the array / arrays output the compared results but once you close this page all the results are deleted and if you ever wanted to check the same results again you would need to go back to compare.php enter all the same details which would then send over POST var to the results.php again.

What I want to do is make unique pages every time you compare so instead of http://www.examplesite.com/results you would get something like:

http://www.examplesite.com/results?=1 or (Which I would pref if possible) http://www.examplesite.com/results/1.

So basically making it so every result set is stored so that people can have links to those specific results, I am not using a database and thought maybe I could store the result array / arrays in a text file and then when people typed in

http://www.examplesite.com/results/245

The normal results.php would be called but because the URL has/245 at the end it would then open that file and load output the saved results.

Answer 1 · 2014-07-30T14:28:31Z

July 30, 2014 2:28pm

This is certainly possible, but not the most semantic way of creating output - remember DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself!). Although your html is only 86 lines, repeating all of your code in a new file for every single item would create a vast amount of html and php in time.

Any updates or changes you plan to make for this view would have to be changed in every single file (but this might be okay if you're only anticipating one or two files at any one time). It would be far more future-proof to create a template and pull in the specific data via an array/database.

You may find more success with your plan using these functions:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-exists.php

and

http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_file_create.asp

and

http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-put-contents.php

Answer 2 · 2014-07-28T20:49:00Z

July 28, 2014 8:49pm

Hey man,

A really simple solution would be to use a database.. If you have any leeway on this, definitely use a database!

I'm not sure if you've seen the Shirts4Mike video series, but Randy first serves product information to the product page via an array in a single text file. There's probably not going to be too much in it either way but my guess is that an array would be faster to index than looking up a file, especially if this list is going to grow to quite an extensive length!

Are you adding in an expiry system? Otherwise that list could get super long :p

I can't tell if you're asking the question about the URL $_GET variables, but URL rewriting via htaccess is covered in the php application videos - Try the badge "Cleaning URLs with Simple Rewrite Rules" http://teamtreehouse.com/library/enhancing-a-simple-php-application-2

Answer 3 · 2014-07-30T14:01:53Z

July 30, 2014 2:01pm

Ah, okay.

Here's the process I would take.. You will have to write the php part :p

Reading

In an include file, I would create the "Super Array". This would be a multidimensional array and hold each individual instances in child arrays. It would look something like:

$super_array[101] = array (
    'first_name' => 'Tom', 
    'last_name' => 'Cawthorn' 
)
$super_array[102] = array (
    'first_name' => 'Robert', 
    'last_name' => 'Walker' 
)

When you come to returning the information for each individual instance, you can call $super_array[$_GET], which will return a 2 dimensional array of the information you need to populate your page. I would turn this into a function because I absolutely love compartmentalising my code.

if (isset($_GET['id'])) {
    $id = intval($_GET['id']);
    $information = get_information($id); 
    //returns a child array of "Super Array". You can add this info to your page where required with $information[key];
} else {
    //show prepared information / redirect
}

function get_information($id) {
    //Maybe do some validation/combining of data
    return $super_array[$id];
}

Writing You mentioned that incoming data is from a variety of arrays. No worries! When you create your new addition for $super_array, you can assign this info to the correct keys like this:

Create "Array" as multidimensional array - this will be the array to be 'saved' e.g.

$new_array['first_name'] = variable from array 1

$new_array['last_name'] = variable from array 2

Now you have all of your information in a single array, it is ready to be appended to $super_array. I would create another function called add_information($new_array).

There's one extra thing you'll need - the unique ID. The unique ID of $new_array will be +1 of the most recently appended array. Again, look to the documentation - but you might be able to do something with array_values() and count() etc to find the last $super_array value.

http://uk1.php.net/manual/en/function.array-values.php

http://uk1.php.net/manual/en/function.count.php

But essentially, you want to find the value for the final $super_array addition and add 1. You can double check it's unique by maybe validating with in_array($unique_id). If in_array returns true, the app will know the id is not unique and you can write some plan B code to sort it out.

http://uk1.php.net/manual/en/function.in-array.php

Now you have: 1) Array of new info 2) unique id

$super_array[$unique_id] = $new_arra

and now the info has been saved into your $super_array include file!

You should maybe think about adding a default timestamp to each item in $super_array and creating a function "remove_expired_items()" every time the array is used. You can call this function from any point in the process, but definitely something to consider!

This is just how I would do it.. I hope some of it helps

Answer 4 · 2014-07-30T20:12:06Z

July 30, 2014 8:12pm

Thanks for all the help Tom.

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Robert Walker

Robert Walker

Creating dynamic pages for a set of PHP results.

4 Answers

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

Robert Walker