[Techtalk] simple php question

[Terri Oda]

(Sorry if someone's already said this -- I'm queueing this message up, but 
it won't get sent 'till later tonight, possibly after someone else has said 
exactly what I'm saying!)

At 02:14 AM 17/03/02 -0500, Davis, Jennifer wrote:
>Another quickie question.  Is there a quick way with php to import some code
>from one html file to another.  Basically I want to write a menu bar that
>will appear on all pages of a site.

There's two functions for that,

<?php include("myfile.html"); ?>

and

<?php require("myfile.html"); ?>

The first just includes the file when it gets to that line of code.  If the 
file can't be found or opened for some reason, it simply doesn't get 
included. I can't remember if it automatically prints an error message or 
if you have to make one yourself.

The second one will die with an error if the file can't be opened, and it 
will do this *before* loading the rest of the file, so you'll get only the 
error, not a half-completed page, if the required file can't be 
included.  Because this check is done first, before parsing the rest of the 
document, require() means the file has to exist for the php document to 
work at all (even if require() is in an if statement and may not actually 
be used in some cases).

Which one you use depends pretty much on what behaviour you want.

  Terri