Article - How to create a flexible navigation with PHP.

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Flexible navigation with PHP

written by:Christian Heilmann on 26.04.2002

Jump to page: 1 2 3 4 5 or read all on one page

The nav.php script

1:     $sites=explode(",","about_us,contact,work_examples,links");
2:     $issite=explode("/",$HTTP_SERVER_VARS['REQUEST_URI']);
3:     $issite=explode(".",$issite[sizeof($issite)-1]);
4:     for ($i=0;$i<sizeof($sites);$i++){
5:         $d=ucwords(str_replace("_"," ",$sites[$i]));
6:         if ($sites[$i] == $issite[0]){
7:             echo "<b>$d</b>";
8:             }
9:         else {
10:             echo "<a href=\"".$sites[$i].".php\">";
11:             echo $d;
12:             echo "</a>";
13:             }
14:         if ($i < sizeof($sites)-1){echo " | ";}
15:         }

line 1 defines all the entries of the navigation, make sure that these values match the actual filenames without extensions.

line 3 retrieves the name of the current site for comparison.

line 4 starts looping over all the entries.

line 6 compares the currently displayed page with the one of the list, and displays the highlighted name without underscores. Each word gets converted to start with an uppercase character (as defined in line 5).

lines 10-12 display a link for all the other sites of our list.

line 14 puts a pipe character ("|") in between the links, but not after the last one.

And that is it! As simple as that. If you now create a new page with the template, you simply add it to the list in line 1 and it will display throughout the whole site.

With a bit of skill and the right naming conventions you can also do a graphical rollover navigation with the same script.

Now, download this demo page and have a look at it.

Table of contents:

The navigation woe
How to gain flexibility
The page template.
The nav.php script
Download and known issues

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