Question

How can I convert a HTML template into a live php-editable template? I’d like to be able to set the title, description, add images and links. (something like the behance uploading system)

Can someone link me to a tutorial?
Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

To do this in a simple way, you should follow this 3 steps :
1- Add custom tags in your HTML template
2- Create a class to make your HTML template writable
3- Load the class, write your template, display the page

1. First, insert some custom tags in your HTML template (template.html), like this :

2. Then, create a quick class (class.php) to make your custom tags writable :

       class Template { var $contents;
   
   
       function load($file) {
           if ($fp = fopen($file, "r")) {
               $this->contents = fread($fp, filesize($file));
               fclose($fp);
           }
       }
   
       function replace($str,$var) {
           $this->contents = str_replace("<".$str.">",$var,$this->contents);
       }
   
       function show() {
           $search = array(
                   '/\t/', //Remove Tabs
                   '/<!--[^\[-]+?-->/', //Remove Comments
                   '/\n\n/' //Remove empty lines
                   );
               $replace = array(
                   '',
                   '',
                   ''
                   );
           $this->contents = preg_replace($search, $replace, $this->contents);
           echo $this->contents;
       }
   }
   

Once this is done, you must create a function to write inside your tags. In my example, to be able to write your <page_title> tag, add the following code to your class.php file :

function writetitle($s) {
    $GLOBALS['writes']++;
    $GLOBALS['page_title'] .= $s;
    return;
}

1. Finally, all you need is to do is to create your page.php. Load the class, write what you want, and display the result.

Something like :

<?php
    require_once('class.php');    //Load Class
    $template = new Template;    
    $template->load("template.html"); //Load HTML template

    //Some query :
    $query = mysql_query('SELECT...');
    $res = mysql_num_rows($query);

    writetitle('my page title went live!, '.$res.'');  //write your content


    $template->show(); //Generate the page
?>

writetitle now acts as an echo, so you can make queries and everything you want.

In the end you have 3 files :
tempalte.html : your template
class.php : your template engine
page.php : an example page usging your template.

hope it helps. 😉