Question

hello guys i badly need your help, php noob here,

im creating a bulletin board-like calendar and it shows the different entries each month. the calendar is divided into 4 quarters hence, i have a php file per quarter. each file displays the months for that quarter and their respective entries. example; my firstq.php contains entries for january, february and march.

i dont have a submit button in any of the page, just a drop down linked image of 1Q, 2Q, 3Q, 4Q that redirects to each file.

how could i declare that when i click the 1Q image it would display the file firstq.php but the url is still index.php and so on?

my default index.php shows 3rd quarter since its july now.

Answer 1

You could add a parameter to the url that determines which page you’re on.

<?php

// at the top of the page

$quarters = array('Q1', 'Q2', 'Q3', 'Q4');
$quarter = 'Q1';

// don't allow access to any file on your system
if( isset($_GET['quarter']) && in_array($_GET['quarter'], $quarters) ) {
  $quarter = $_GET['quarter'];
}

// switch the short syntax to a filename
switch($quarter) {
  case 'Q1' :
    $quarter = 'firstq.php';
  break;
  case 'Q2' :
    $quarter = 'secondq.php';
  break;
  case 'Q3' :
    $quarter = 'thirdq.php';
  break;
  case 'Q4' :
    $quarter = 'fourthq.php';
  break;
}

And then this in the page where you are ready to include it.

<?php include_once $quarter; ?>

---

Your links to each quarter would look like this.

<ul id="quarters">
  <li><a href="index.php?quarter=Q1"><img src="images/Q1.jpg" /></a></li>
  <li><a href="index.php?quarter=Q2"><img src="images/Q2.jpg" /></a></li>
  <li><a href="index.php?quarter=Q3"><img src="images/Q3.jpg" /></a></li>
  <li><a href="index.php?quarter=Q4"><img src="images/Q4.jpg" /></a></li>
</ul>