Changing PHP variable from an link

Question

I'm making a site using divs. I have one across the top with a row of links which I want to change what's in the main window. I would prefer to keep strictly to PHP and HTML and use a full page refresh as I am comfortable with them at current, rather than using an Ajax refresh as I don't have any knowledge of Ajax.

I don't want to use iframes. I thought the best way to do this would be as follows:

<div id="top">
<a href="news.html">News</a>
</div>
<div id="main">
<?php include($page); ?>
</div>

What I need is a way of changing the $page variable upon clicking the link. If this means changing the variable and then reloading the page then so be it.

A command following the logic of:

<a href="news.html" action="<?php $page="news.html"; ?>">News</a>

would be ideal! I thought about using a form, but it seems there should be an easier way.

I think what is being asked here is how to load a new html / php page in a div. You can accomplish that using jQuery's load. See a similar question [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3564356/loading-html-page-inside-div?rq=1) — Gaʀʀʏ, Jul 03 '12 at 21:10
you don't need to parse a variable you just need to examine what the current page is , this information will be it the $_SERVER array. — , Jul 03 '12 at 21:10
Or you can pass the target page as a GET parameter via `` and `include($_GET['target']);` — Nico Schertler, Jul 03 '12 at 21:12

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 03 '12 at 21:12

You can't change a variable, per se. Reloading the page means running the PHP program from scratch. You just have to provide it with different input. From a regular link, that is only possible through the URL.

<a href="foo.php?something=a_value">

Data in the query string is accessible via $_GET

echo htmlspecialchars($_GET['something']);

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 03 '12 at 21:19

you could use a GET request on the same page,

<a href="news.html?page=news.html">News</a>

This will cause a page refresh on click, with the value for the page variable passed to php, and accessible through

$page = $_GET['page'] //at this point, $page will be "news.html"

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 03 '12 at 22:04

If I understood correctly, to change the include on the fly, as you are talking, you need to use AJAX, otherwise you need a full refresh.

Send data back to the server, with a normal link.

<a href="page.php?page=newpage.html">link</a>

Then you can use the $_GET variable of PHP, which is a array that parse the parameters for a URL page.

Example:

$page = $_GET['page']
include $page;

If you use jQuery, or want to try a easy AJAX method, you can search for jQuery.load().

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 04 '12 at 01:14

You could also use

    $page = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

At the top of the PHP script. If your page is "somepage.php" the above will output

    /somepage.php

as the value of $page.

To get rid of the slash and .php just use substr:

    $page = substr($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'],1,-4);

which will leave you with $page = somepage

Changing PHP variable from an link

4 Answers4