W3Exchange / Calling PHP functions in a Menu

kibanga - 2006-08-30 03:05:43

I have files of several with geographical information of several places and animals that i want to be accesed by through the menu. Here is an outline of my project; I have simplified it by taking only parts that are relavent for my questions below.

I have a PHP class defined as follows:

Code::

<?php//=================================================  
//mymain.html 
class mysite 
{   var $pagetitle; 
    var $pagefile; 
        
   function setsite($title,$contents) 
        { 
        $this->pagetitle=$title; 
        $this->pagefile=$contents; 
        } 


    function menu() 
      { 
      include_once("mymenu.html"); 
      } 
        
    function content() 
      { 
      $pagetitle=$this->pagetitle; 
      $contentsfile=$this->pagefile; 
      include_once("mycontents.html"); 
      }   
     
} 
//================================================= 
?>

The function menu calls a "mymenu.html" file to set up the menus. A typical setup of myenu.html is as follows:

Code::

<?php 
 //================================================= 
 // mymenu.html. 
 ?> 
 <div class="menu"> 
  <ul> 
   <li class="Animals"><a href="..">Animals 
    <table><tr><td> 
    <ul> 
          <li class="Elephants"><a href="..">Elephants</a></li> 
          <li class="Lions"><a href="..">Lions</a></li> 
          <li class="Zebras"><a href="..">Zebras</a></li> 
   </ul> 
   </td></tr></table></a> 
   </li> 
   <li class="Places"><a href="..">Places 
   <table><tr><td> 
    <ul> 
          <li class="Brazil"><a href="..">Brazil</a></li> 
          <li class="South Africa"><a href="..">South Africa</a></li> 
          <li class="Malaysia"><a href="..">Malaysia</a></li> 
    </ul> 
    </td></tr></table></a> 
    </li> 
    </ul> 
</div>  
?>

As it can be seen, this menufile is not complete; that is where my questions are. Before I pose my questions, let me finish up a few more codes.

Since function "content' in this class requires, "mycontents.html", is created it as follows:

Code::

<?php 
 //================================================= 
 // mycontents.html. 
 ?> 
  <h2><? echo $pagetitle;?></h2> 
    <hr> 
   </div>     
  <?  
include_once($contentsfile); 
//================================================= 
 ?>

Basically, the contes file displays the $pagetitle, and opens a $contentsfile. Someone may question this organisation but my actual file larger file requires it to be so.

Finally, I have my font code file as follows:

Code::

<?php 
//================================================= 
// mymain.html. 
  
include_once("mysitecls.html"); 
$thissite = new mysite; 
$thissite->setsite("My World Travels","mydefault_contents.html"); 
?> 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en"> 
<html> 

<head> 
<title><?echo $thissite->pagetitle?></title> 
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> 
<link rel="stylesheet" media="all" type="text/css" href="far-mex.css" /> 
</head> 

<body> 
<div id="leftcol" > 
 <? $thissite->menu(); ?> 
</div> 
<div id="leftcol" > 
<? $thissite->content();?> 
</div> 

</body> 
</html> 
<? 

?>

Basically it initilizes the class with a file tile of "My World Travels" where the file contents are in "mydefault_contents.html". After that the user through the menu selects what a topic to be displayed, each selection has to set up a string with for $pagetitle (i.e the title of the topic) and a string for the $pagefile (i.e. file name with details of the topic). This construction is in complete in the menufile shown above, which is the center of my questions:

I have three questions:

(1) For wathever url adress I put in the <a href=".."> tags, the menu keeps opening the root directory when viewed in in Netscape 8.1 (based on firefox); although it works quite well with Internet Explorer V 7.0.5296.0 (beta). My first question is, what makes my menu code fail in netscape while it works in internet explorer.

(2) How can I make my menu to establish the values of $pagetitle and $pagefile using the internal "setsite" function of 'mysite' class without opening another file which can replace my current screen. In fact I want the screen layout to remain intact, only the left pane of the screen is to be updated.

(3) After the the values of $pagetitle and $pagefile are set in the class, will that automatically cause the screen contents (in the left pane) to be updated?

I am not sure where my questions are clear, but this time I tried to post as much information as possible.

Any help will be highly appreciated.