Please help with hyperlinks / functions

[timvdwest]

Hi everyone,

I was hoping somebody could help me unravel this - i'm very new in programming in php and i'm teaching myself so bear with me.

scenario:

I have a website with 4 distinct section (all in seperate tables):

1. A header - where my menu buttons are,
2. A body,
3. A static piece,
4. A footer.

I want to be able to interchange the body section with different data (i would like to use include files), but i don't want to have to repeat all the other data in a seperate php file.

So in short i want the body to change and the rest to stay the same.

I have the layout of the page on www.melktert.co.za/home.php - you'll see the white section in the middle is what i want to change when the user selects a different menu item.

oh yes, and i've got each section listed as a different function.

would really appreciate some input.

thanks,
tim

[timvdwest]

hey, i'm an idiot. just realized what i gotta do now. sorry. thanks anyway,

[nav33n]

And what are you supposed to do ? :)

[timvdwest]

ahoy.

What i did now was just put each section into a different include file and then made my main pages like news.php, link.php, etc. and just included the sections in :) without having to re-copy the code each time.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Also, I have a SQL database running with news articles and event information. How do I create a link of a certain article? for instance, i list all the news articles on the right and i want to open a specific one by clicking on it from the list. at the moment my list is just a static list.

please help me out, it really takes me long to figure this stuff out on my own hehe.

Thanks for reply.

Tim

[nav33n]

Simple. Pass the id of the news. For eg.

$query="select id from news";
$result=mysql_query($query);
while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)){
$id=$row['id'];
echo <a href=\"news.php?id=$id\">Part of the news</a>";
}
//this will print all the ids from the table.
//when the user clicks on the hyperlink, in news.php, 
$id=$_GET['id'];
$query="select news from news where id='$id'";
$result=msql_query($query);
$row=mysql_fetch_array($result); //id returns only 1 row with the news
$news=$row['news'];
print $news;
?>

That should give you a basic idea.

[timvdwest]

thanks a lot - this is all new to me, but i understand the code when i see it - just to think of it is difficult for me.

oh yes, and another thing - how do i create a form that outputs html code into the database? like this news field now, i have a web app that i made to enter the data into the mySQL database, but the normal text area box is just plain text and i have to manually code the html tags in. is there an applet (e.g. the one i'm typing in now) to automatically add those tags?

thanks again.

[nav33n]

Yep. There is tinymce editor which has all the options you are looking for ! Have a look. Its easy to use.

[timvdwest]

wow, everything just came in to place now! thanks a lot for the help! you'll most probably hear more from me!

tim

[nav33n]

:) yes sure!