Question

I am not an expert in PHP. I am trying to increase the use of include() to make my website code as clean as possible instead of just copying, for example, code of the header in all the pages. I have two questions

1 . Is it good practice to use include() a lot in terms of server requests, speed, …etc ?

index.php

(bunch of code)

  <? include("connect.php") ?>;

(bunch of code)

 <? include("header.php") ?>;

(bunch of code)

 <? include("footer.php") ?>;

---

2 . Is it fine also to use nested include’s()? example:

header.php
(some code)

<? include("searchFormInput.php") ?>;

now index.php will include header.php, then header.php will include searchFormInput.php as well
is this fine?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

Yes, including is a common practice.

Yes, including gives you slight performance penalty (very small).

But including gives you readibility gain and thanks to it will be easier to employ DRY rule. Just remember the following:

• if the file contains some code that should be executed only once (some setup, class definitions, function definitions etc.), use include_once() (it will have no effect if invoked again on the same filename),

• if the file contains some code executed multiple times (eg. some template for a form), use simple include(),

• if something is required for your application to work (eg. some security code, some setup etc.), use require() instead of include() or require_once() instead of include_once() – if the file will not be found, PHP will throw fatal error and will stop executing your script,