A better way to do "current" links?

[tmallen]

I was up late last night hacking on a new (to me) way to do selected links. I got pretty far, but I'd like to hear how you guys do it. Is there a better method than the horribly tedious (and often recommended):

<a class="<?php if($page_id == "home") echo "current "; ?>"

My solution used a GET variable which mod_rewrite transformed into a friendly URL to identify the current page. Then, the navigation was generated from an associative array for which the key was the link ID, and the value for this key was another array with the human link title and another item for the url. Links are generated from this array (which could be fetched from the DB) and the current page ID is checked against each nav item's key.

 

I can post the code later this evening once I'm out of the office.

[stylusrose]

well... you could turn it into a function

 

<a class="<?php pageName($index)?>"

 

or

 

change pageName() to link_home() or something like that...

[rhodesa]

Well, if you build your navigation dynamically, you can just test the value against page_id...a simple example:

<?php
  $pages = array(
    'home' => 'Home',
    'about' => 'About Us',
    'contact' => 'Contact Us',
  );
  $page_id = $_GET['page_id'];
  foreach($pages as $id=>$title)
    print "<a href=\"index.php?page_id={$id}\"".($id==$page_id?" class=\"current\"":"").">{$title}</a>";
?>

[thebadbad]

I developed a method myself some time ago, using CSS selectors. The PHP and CSS for the current page would look like this:

 

<?php
$path = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
//for example "/gallery/summer/"
?>
<style type="text/css">
#menu a[href="<?php echo $path; ?>"] {
	background-color: red;
}
</style>

 

The above CSS applies to any anchor element, where the "href" attribute is set to $path, inside the element with id="menu".

 

This should work in browsers supporting CSS2.

[dezkit]

<?php

$page = strtolower($_GET['page']);

switch ($page)

{

    case 'home':

          print 'Current';

    break;

}

?>

[rhodesa]

<?php

$page = strtolower($_GET['page']);

switch ($page)

{

    case 'home':

          print 'Current';

    break;

}

?>

 

How does that help in any way?

[dezkit]

no idea

[rhodesa]

no idea

 

and i think it's time for me to call it a day

[tmallen]

Well, if you build your navigation dynamically, you can just test the value against page_id...a simple example:

<?php
  $pages = array(
    'home' => 'Home',
    'about' => 'About Us',
    'contact' => 'Contact Us',
  );
  $page_id = $_GET['page_id'];
  foreach($pages as $id=>$title)
    print "<a href=\"index.php?page_id={$id}\"".($id==$page_id?" class=\"current\"":"").">{$title}</a>";
?>

I think I like this one best. It's like what I was hacking on last night, but cleaner. I hadn't thought of using the key as both the URL and ID; I was defining the two separately.