Question

I have an HTML menu and i have styled it with CSS to highlight the current page. as i have more then 8 pages using the same code. i wanted to do something dynamic and i created a PHP function for that,

here is my code..

 <?php    function hiddenmenu($activeicon1 = 0, $activeicon2 = 0, $activeicon3 = 0, $activeicon4 = 0,
                               $activeicon5 = 0, $activeicon6 = 0, $activeicon7 = 0, $activeicon8 = 0, $activeicon9 = 0) {
 ?>

                    <div class="icon-no-spacer">
                        <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon1; ?>" href="index.php" title=""><img src="images/icons/48/display.png" alt="" />Dashboard</a></p>
                    </div>

                    <div class="icon-spacer">
                        <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon2; ?>" href="post-news.php" title=""><img src="images/icons/48/text_rtf.png" alt="" />Post News</a></p>
                    </div>

                    <div class="icon-spacer">
                        <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon3; ?>" href="news.php" title=""><img src="images/icons/48/wordprocessing.png" alt="" />News</a></p>
                    </div> 

                    <div class="icon-spacer">
                        <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon4; ?>" href="post-advertisement.php" title="" ><img src="images/icons/48/view_pim_news.png" alt="" />Post Ad</a></p>
                    </div>

                    <div class="icon-spacer">
                       <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon5; ?>" href="advertisement.php" title=""><img src="images/icons/48/view_pim_tasks.png" alt="" />Advertise</a></p>
                    </div>

                    <div class="icon-spacer">
                        <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon6; ?>" href="comments.html" title=""><img src="images/icons/48/spread.png" alt="" />Comments</a></p>
                    </div>

                    <div class="icon-spacer">
                        <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon7; ?>" href="#" title=""><img src="images/icons/48/rss_tag.png" alt="" />Sponsors</a></p>
                    </div>

                    <div class="icon-spacer">
                        <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon8; ?>" href="#" title=""><img src="images/icons/48/fileview_preview.png" alt="" />Video</a></p>
                    </div>

                    <div class="icon-spacer">
                        <p><a id="<?php echo $activeicon9; ?>" href="information.php" title="" ><img src="images/icons/48/help_about.png" alt="" />Information</a></p>
                    </div> 
<?php                  
}              
?>

the code is working perfectly fine. is it ok to go with this. ?? lot of people might have come accross this type of issue i want to know the best feasible solution for this..

thank you

Answer 1

I would do at least these 2 things differently:

1. separate the definition of the menu items from the rendering, for easier maintenance.
2. only render available choices to avoid structural errors.

Something like this can do that:

<?php
$choices = array(
    1 => array("index.php",              "display.png",          "Dashboard"),
    2 => array("post-news.php",          "text_rtf.png",         "Post News"),
    3 => array("news.php",               "wordprocessing.png",   "News"),
    4 => array("post-advertisement.php", "view_pim_news.png",    "Post Ad"),
    5 => array("advertisement.php",      "view_pim_tasks.png",   "Advertise"),
    6 => array("comments.html",          "spread.png",           "Comments"),
    7 => array("#",                      "rss_tag.png",          "Sponsors"),
    8 => array("#",                      "fileview_preview.png", "Video"),
    9 => array("information.php",        "help_about.png",       "Information")
);

function hiddenmenu($iconIds) {
    global $choices;

    foreach ($iconIds as $iconId){
        echo '<div class="icon-no-spacer">'
           . '<p><a id="' . $iconId . '"'
           . ' href="' . $choices[$iconId][0] . '"'
           . ' title=""><img src="images/icons/48/' . $choices[$iconId][1] . '"'
           . ' alt="" />' . $choices[$iconId][2] . '</a></p>' ."\n";
    }
}

hiddenmenu(array(1,2,3,8,9));