need advice

[Stooney]

I'm trying to decide a navigation method for a site.  What I'm wondering is if the following method is crap or not.

basic representation of index.php
[code]
include("header.php");

if(!isset($location))
    $location="home";


if($location="home")
    include("home.php");
if($location="contact")
    include("contact.php");

[/code]

then a link would look like
[code]
<a href="index.php?location=home">Home</a>
[/code]

so basically index.php will always show the header, menu, footer files and the actual content will be displayed based on $location.  Is there a better way to go about this?  i know GET doesn't seem that great.  thnx in advance

[ted_chou12]

if($location="home")
    include("home.php");
if($location="contact")
    include("contact.php");

for these, you should use double equal signs:
if($location=="home")
    include("home.php");
if($location=="contact")
    include("contact.php");

[Jessica]

You can do a similar thing with mod_rewrite. What I do is have my mod_rewrite direct anything to index.php, then index.php gets the url using $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], then include the relevant page.

So I have mysite.com/about/ - that will include about.php

[ted_chou12]

wouldnt that confilct with the index page of the about folder though?
Ted

[Jessica]

Ted, there is no about folder, let alone an index file in there. It's using mod_rewrite.

[Stooney]

yea i meant ==.  and thnx for the help, i'll go with mod_rewrite

[Jessica]

Chris, here's my code for my index.php It allows you include multiple files as you need, so you can get pretty advanced. Feel free to ask me if you need help with it, if you decide to use it.

[code]
$url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
// Take off any initial slashes
if(substr($url, 0, 1) == '/'){
$url = substr($url, 1, strlen($url)-1);
}

//Get the url minus any GET vars
if(strrpos($url, "?")){
$url = substr($url, 0, strrpos($url, "?"));
}

// Take out the trailing slash
if(substr($url, strlen($url)-1, strlen($url)) == '/'){
$url = substr($url, 0, strlen($url)-1);
}else{
//header('Location: '.$siteURL.$url.'/');
}
// Split the url into an array
$url_parts = split('/', $url);

// If any page
$inc[0] = $basePath.'pages/'.$url_parts[0].'.php';
$incs = true;

// if index Index
if(!$url_parts[0] || $url_parts[0] == 'index'){
$inc[0] = 'base.php';  /// what you'd normally have on index.
$incs = true;
}

//if processing page, for forms, etc.
if($url_parts[1] == 'process'){
  $inc[0] = 'process_'.$url_parts[0].'.php';
  $incs = false;
}

//If the page is supposed to be wrapped in html
if($incs){
require_once($incPath.'header.php');
if($inc){
foreach($inc AS $in){
require_once($in);
}
}
require_once($incPath.'footer.php');
}else{
if($inc){
foreach($inc AS $in){
require_once($in);
}
}
}
[/code]

and my htaccess
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9_/]+)$ /index.php [NC]