Help with include function

Question

Im trying to make a simple template system in PHP. I'm new to PHP, so it's nothing serious. I have some problems though:

A regular include works:

$variable = "test";
include("templates/news.html");

But this won't:

This says $variable is undefined:

$variable = "test";
getTemplate("news");

The Function:

function getTemplate($tpl) {
    $file = "templates/$tpl.html";
    if (file_exists($file))
        return include($file);
    return false;
}

news.html

<h1>php echo $variable</h1>

the function works and includes the page but it dont write out the variables

I include the function on top of all pages.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

you are trying to reach global variable in a function.

you must either declare a variable global in a function or just use: $GLOBALS["variable"]

function () {
global $variable;
etc..
}

Answer 2

Because you're including the file from inside a function, the contents of that file are no longer in the global scope.

You either need to add global $variable; to the start of the function, or use echo $GLOBALS['variable']; in news.html.

Answer 3

I believe your problem has to do with variable scoping. When you call a function, you are unable to access variables outside of that function, except global variables (more on this in a second) or variables passed to your function. The global function tells PHP that you'd like to use the same variable in the function as in the parent scope. You can also use the define function to define constants for your script, which are universally accessed.

Using large number of global variables is very frowned upon, I'd suggest passing either an associative array to the function, or use a more object oriented approach.

Hope this helps, Jacob

Answer 4

With the extract function, you can define different variables from an array.

You can make it like this:

$vars = array('var1' => "value1", 'var2' => "value2");

function getTemplate($tpl, $vars) {
$file = "templates/$tpl.html";

extract($vars, EXTR_SKIP)

if (file_exists($file))
    return include($file);
return false;
}

getTemplate('news', $vars);

In your template, you can use $var1 and $var2.

Answer 5

Have you considered using Smarty

If you don't want to use this template engine maybe you should check some of the ideas behind it. In short, it deals with assigning variables to templates by assigning variable values to an object. If you assigned variable to a template object you can then use it in template file.