Thoughts on creating a view selector in php

Question

Hey all,

I'm looking to create a nice way to separate view and controller in php.

What I'd like to happen is people would go to: localhost/index.php?view=signup and they would see the whole page with a signup box.. and NOT a login box.

I'm wondering if anyone has made this before.. I'm specifically looking for a elegant way of letting Javascript handle the hides and shows after php initially loads the page. So maybe something like this:

<div class="login" style="display:<?php echo $login; ?>;">

The trick is that I want the default (localhost/index.php) to display everything. So if ?view=.. is not defined then show it all.. I really don't want to clutter my view with a ton of if statements with isset()..

Let me know your solutions to this problem!

Thanks, Matt Mueller

Answer 1

Simply do something like this: (nothing to do with CSS)

<?php

// login.php

if(strtolower($_GET['v']) == 'signup'){

?>
<form>/* sign up form goes here */</form>
<?php

}else{

?>
<form>/* login form goes here */</form>
<?php


}

?>

Or you could have used the switch/select if you have too many pages in one php file:

<?php

// login.php

switch(strtolower($_GET['v'])){

case 'signup':
?>
<form>/* sign up form goes here */</form>
<?php    
break;

default:    
?>
<form>/* login form goes here */</form>
<?php
break;

}

?>

Cheerio!

UPDATE: with regards to ability to use AJAX, you can do something like this:

<?php

// login.php

$_showcontent = false;
if(isset($_GET['c'])){$_showcontent = true;}

if(!$_showcontent){
  // load the header, javascript components and whatever so on
  echo '<div id="view">';
}

switch(strtolower($_GET['v'])){

case 'signupstep1':
?>
<a href="#view" onclick="return go_step2();">Step 2</a>
<?php    
break;

case 'signupstep2':
?>
<form>/* sign up form goes here */</form>
<?php    
break;

case 'signupcomplete':
?>
  /* sign up complete page */
<?php    
break;

default:    
?>
<a href="#view" onclick="return go_signup();"></a>
<?php
break;

}

if(!$_showcontent){
  echo '</div>';    
  // footer and what other stuff you need here
}

?>

The Javascript code:

<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */

function go_signup(){
  $("#view").load("<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>?c&v=signupstep1");
  return false;
}

function go_step2(){
  $("#view").load("<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>?c&v=signupstep2");
  return false;
}

/* ]]> */</script>