4
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I feel that I am repeating myself a lot with this HTML/PHP code. Am I right, and is there a maintainable way of reducing the amount of repetition in the code?

mydomain/index.php:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<?php $root="/mywebdir"; ?>
<html>
<head>
<?php include("$root/inc/meta.php"); ?>
<meta name="description" content="Some description" />
<meta name="keywords" content="some,home,page,keywords" />
<title>Home - This Website</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="main">
<?php include("$root/inc/header.php"); ?>
<?php include("$root/inc/nav.php"); ?>
<div>
<h2>Home</h2>
<p>Introduction.</p>
<p>Some content.</p>
<p>More content.</p>
</div>
<?php include("$root/inc/footer.php"); ?>
</div>
</body>
</html>

mydomain/somedir/index.php:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<?php $root="/mywebdir"; ?>
<html>
<head>
<?php include("$root/inc/meta.php"); ?>
<meta name="description" content="Some description" />
<meta name="keywords" content="some,keywords,about,this,page" />
<title>Some Page - This Website</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="main">
<?php include("$root/inc/header.php"); ?>
<?php include("$root/inc/nav.php"); ?>
<div>
<h2>Some Page</h2>
<p>Some content about this page.</p>
</div>
<?php include("$root/inc/footer.php"); ?>
</div>
</body>
</html>
\$\endgroup\$

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4
\$\begingroup\$

Consider using existing template systems to help you that support inheritance. Template inheritance isn't a strict requirement, but is a powerful feature that makes maintaining templates a lot easier. Twig is easy to use, and feature-rich.

If you want to go it your own way, you could simply implement the use of layout files:

layout_default.php

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<?php $root="/mywebdir"; ?>
<html>
<head>
<?php include("$root/inc/meta.php"); ?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php echo $description ?>" />
<meta name="keywords" content="<?php echo keywords?>" />
<title><?php echo $title ?></title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="main">
<?php include("$root/inc/header.php"); ?>
<?php include("$root/inc/nav.php"); ?>
<div><?php echo $contents ?></div>
<?php include("$root/inc/footer.php"); ?>
</div>
</body>
</html>

example page.php

<?php ob_start() ?>
<p> main body html</p>
<?php
$title = "x"; 
$description = "x"; 
$keywords = "x"; 
$contents = ob_get_clean();
require 'layout_default.php'

This is a very crude implementation, simply enough to illustrate the principle.

\$\endgroup\$
3
  • \$\begingroup\$ Would it be bad to use a string to define the page contents? (Instead of ob_get_clean) \$\endgroup\$
    – Kendall Frey
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 21:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ I wouldn't say bad, but it won't make your life easy - output buffering simply makes it a lot easier to construct your main html body any way you wish (i.e. as .. plain html without $contents .="<p>this.."; $contents .= "<p>that.."; etc.) - but the above is just an example. \$\endgroup\$
    – AD7six
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 21:56
  • \$\begingroup\$ Well, I think I'll give it a try. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kendall Frey
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 21:59

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