Question

I am a beginner in PHP and would like to load a daily meditation every day that is specific to that day.

So on January 1st, I would call the quote from 1_1.php and on the 2nd 1_2.php, and so on until February 1st which would call 2_1.php and on the 2nd 2_2.php on the third 2_3.php.

Is this possible and how hard would it be?

It would also be acceptable to have 365 files where it just called the next one in order every twenty-four hours, or one file with 365 lines and called a different line every day, but I do not know how to do this as I only know how to build in html and design so any help or advice would be great.

Answer 1

I would most definitely not use 365 different files. It might be sensible to use a database, but since these seem to be one-liners and you are new to PHP, the simples method is to them in a big array. The downside of this is that the whole array will be read and parsed on each page load. But I wouldn’t worry about the performance of that until it becomes a problem.

$meditations = array(
  '1-Jan' => "Some meditation for today",
  '2-Jan' => "Some meditation for tomorrow",
  ...
  ...
  '28-Dec' => "Something for today",
  '29-Dec' => "Something for tomorrow",
  '30-Dec' => "Something for tomorrow2",
  '31-Dec' => "Something for new year's eve"
);

Then access them as:

echo $meditations[date('j-M')];
// Today will output
//something for today

If you prefer, insted of using the format dd-Mon for array keys, you can use numeric months as in:

array('28-12' => "something for today");
// Access as:
echo $meditations[date('j-m')];

The complete bit to include inside your PHP page (note it will need to be a .php page, rather than .html) is:

<?php
$meditations = array(
   '1-1' => "Some meditation for today",
   '2-1' => "Some meditation for tomorrow",
   // etc....
);
echo $meditations[date('j-m')];
?>

You can alternatively store the huge array in its own file called meditations.php, and include it:

File meditations.php

<?php
$meditations = array(
   '1-1' => "Some meditation for today",
   '2-1' => "Some meditation for tomorrow",
   // etc....
);
?>

Main file:

<?php 
include("meditations.php");
echo $meditations[date('j-m')];
?>

To include this in a plain HTML page (not .php), you’ll need an <iframe>. Assuming your PHP is working correctly in a file called meditations.php, call the <iframe> like this:

<iframe src='meditations.php' />