Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

PHP Build a Basic PHP Website (2018) Building a Media Library in PHP Working with _GET Variables

James Barrett
James Barrett
13,253 Points
Posted by James Barrett
James Barrett
13,253 Points

What is more efficient? PHP INCLUDE Question

Hi,

Alena talks about using the $_GET method to change the title of the page. In my own project, I have used an INCLUDE for the navigation and just echo'd out the $pageTitle each time with a different string.

So my question is, what way is more efficient? Are there bad practices to this?

Thanks, James.

2 Answers

Edward C. Young
Edward C. Young
10,323 Points
Edward C. Young
Edward C. Young
10,323 Points

Most Web Programming Languages (PHP, ASP.NET, ASP, JSP) are server side languages. That means that the Web Server hosting your pages does all the processing before the resulting page is passed to your browser. Your method, while it works detracts from that principle. While the include is still pre-processed, the _GET global allows you to pass parameters anywhere in your entire website, with the added benefit of only typing 

$pageTitle

in at least two places (Page Title, Page h1). Your code has at least 5 places (Page Title, Page h1, and your 3 includes), plus you have no way to test if 

cat

is empty.