Question

Describe the mechanics in PHP relevant terms of a PHP/MYSQL page (A.php) that will 1) use one template to write itself (simple), 2) take input from the user to update a database (simple), 3) upon command parse another PHP page (B.php) (???) and save (B.php) page as a static HTML (B.html) (???).

UPDATE= I found a post, here at SO, helpfully suggesting (to another, GROAN, non-Uber Geek with a completely Pedestrian Question) he could capture html from a php page using output buffer. Will this work for a different php file?

Answer 1

It saddened me to get reamed on this question. To show my Q was in good faith, I’m answering my own question with what was a simple solution. I created generate.php to run when a change was made to the content. No cache needed.

// the switch...
$update_live = isset($_GET['update_live']) ? TRUE : FALSE;
// $adminPath, $livePath, $adminUrl are set in an include and contains site config data...
$tempfile = $adminPath . 'tempindex.html'; //a temp file...
$livefile = $livePath . 'index.html'; //the static live file...
$this_template = $adminUrl . 'main-index.php'; //the php template file...
$username = "php_admin";
$password = "123xyz456";

if(!($update_live)){
        $errors[] = "Did not submit from an edit page. You can only access this page by referral!";
}else{
        if(file_exists($tempfile)){
                unlink($tempfile);
        }
        /* =3, $html = file_get_contents($this_template, false, $context);*/
        $html = file_get_contents($this_template);
        if($html === false){
                $errors[] = "Unable to load template. Static page update aborted!";
                exit();
        }
        if(!file_put_contents($tempfile, $html)){
                $errors[] = "Unable to write $tempfile. Static page update aborted!";
                exit();
        }

        if(!copy($tempfile, $livefile)){
                $errors[] = "Unable to overwrite index file. Static page update aborted!";
                exit();
        }
        if(!unlink($tempfile)){
                $errors[] = "Unable to delete $tempfile. Static page update aborted!";
                exit();
        }
}