How can I use php to generate css?

Question

In my first version of this question, I did not offer enough information, I am sorry. Here is a clearer version of what help I need. Many of your answers are close already, this will help:

Much More Specific Version of This Question:

I've decided to use php with css to make my pages work more efficiently than they would if I were to achieve the same outcome with javascript. This is not important. What's important is that the two methods that I have tried to do this (as shown in a tutorial) are:

adding

AddType application/x-httpd-php .css

to my .htaccess

Then, when the style sheet showed up in the page's sources but did not have an affect on the page I tried using

<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.php" media="screen">

to link my stylesheet as a php file, as suggested by this tutorial. http://www.phpro.org/articles/Embedding-PHP-In-CSS.html

Here was the css that I was testing with the php variables:

<?php
/*** set the content type header ***/
header("Content-type: text/css");

/** set the paragraph color ***/
$para_color = '#0000ff';

/*** set the heading size ***/
$heading_size = '2em';

/*** set the heading color ***/
$heading_color = '#c0c0c0';
?>

p{
    color: <?php echo $para_color;  ?>;
    font-weight: bold;
    font-size: 1.2em;
    text-align: left;
}       

h1{
    color: <?php echo $heading_color; ?>;
    font-size = <?php echo $heading_size; ?>;
    text-align: centre;
}

Both methods gave me the same outcome, with the css showing up exactly as is should as a stylesheet source, but not showing up on the page UNLESS I made a change to the style in the page's dev tools, after which the page would style just fine.

Question: Why is this happening, and how do I fix it?

Old Version:

The question here is a simple one:

How can I use PHP in CSS?

I am creating a website where it will be much more efficient both in time and in processing speed for me to use php within CSS to achieve various desired results, rather than using javascript.

I'm told that this can be done. How?

Answer 1

Your question is worded incorrectly and has confused a lot of people. What you want is a PHP file that will "generate" a CSS file so to speak. So instead of using <link> for a CSS file, you will use it to link to a PHP file which outputs CSS. As shown in the tutorial you posted.

<?php
/*** set the content type header ***/
header("Content-type: text/css");

/***
query the database for the background color
provided you have a valid MySQL connection or whatever you are using.
***/
$background_color = mysqli_query($dbc, "SELECT `background_color` FROM user_settings WHERE user_id = 1");

/** set the paragraph color ***/
$para_color = '#0000ff';

/*** set the heading size ***/
$heading_size = '2em';

/*** set the heading color ***/
$heading_color = '#c0c0c0';
?>

html{
    background: <?php echo $background_color; ?>
}

p{
        color: <?php echo $para_color;  ?>;
        font-weight: bold;
        font-size: 1.2em;
        text-align: left;
}       

h1{
        color: <?php echo $heading_color; ?>;
        font-size = <?php echo $heading_size; ?>;
        text-align: centre;
}

Now in your PHP file, you would use something like this.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.php" media="screen">

Edit: Added hypothetical MySQL query on how to retrieve a user's preference. Cannot be thorough due to the vagueness of the question.

Answer 2

You can make your css file a php one.

For example,

default.css.php

And in there, you'd have

<?php header("Content-type: text/css; charset: UTF-8"); ?>  


body {
 background: <?=$color?>;
}

More detailed info here: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/supercharge-your-css-with-php-under-the-hood/

Answer 3

in your html file:

<link href="testCSS.php" rel="stylesheet">

in the testCSS.php file:

<?php
header("Content-type: text/css");
echo "body,html{background-color:silver; height:100%;color:white}";
?>

This is just a simple example. You can always complicate the way of generating the stylesheet.

Answer 4

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. more info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets CSS is not a programming language, and does not have the tools that come with a server side language like PHP. However, we can use Server-side languages to generate style sheets.

<html>
<head>
<title>...</title>
<style type=”text/css”>
table {
margin: 8px;
}

th {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: .7em;
background: #666;
color: #FFF;
padding: 2px 6px;
border-collapse: separate;
border: 1px solid #000;
}

td {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: .7em;
border: 1px solid #DDD;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<?php>
echo "<table>";
echo "<tr><th>ID</th><th>hashtag</th></tr>";
while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result))
{
echo "<tr onmouseover=\"hilite(this)\" onmouseout=\"lowlite(this)\"><td>$row[0]</td>                <td>$row[1]</td></tr>\n";
}
echo "</table>";
?>
</body>
</html>

Answer 5

PHP is a server side language whereas CSS is style sheet but you can create some conditional checks and play with classes.

Just an example:

<span <?php if($a == 1) { echo "class='left'" ; } ?>This is some text </span>

In your CSS:

.left{
//some css work here
}

So in this way you can apply css to any element on the basis of conditional statements

Answer 6

How about the following in the header of your file:

<style type=”text/css”>
   table {
   margin: <?php echo rand(1,5);?>px;
   }

This would include "inline" styling (in this case, the margin of the table element is determine programmatically by choosing a random number between 5 and 10.). It's a trivial example but I believe this is what you are after. Without more information provided it's hard to be more helpful.

Obviously you want your php to do something more sensible - but the idea (that php generates some of the css instructions) seems to be what you are after.

Answer 7

It would be possible if you wrote the css part directly on your php file in a style tag instead of including the style sheet externally