PHP Include Navigation Menu - Updating Current Tab

Ok so here is my problem. I currently have approximately 15 pages, all with a navigational menu. I have recently been needing to change the tabs for the menu, but have to go in to every page individually and update it. For certain pages I will make the <li> tag use the class "active" to show the tab selected. How would I go about doing a 'php include' for this? I remember at one time I had a site that included the navigation in a php file, but could tell what page it was on due to the main div class(or something like that) and actually give one of the items the "active" class to make it appear selected.

Below is my code for the navigation. The first <li> would be the selected tab. Thanks ahead of time.

<div id="navigation">
  <ul>
    <li class="active"><a href="../../index.php"><b>About</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../services/index.php"><b>Services</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../profile/index.php"><b>Profile</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../portfolio/index.php"><b>Our Portfolio</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../bidding/index.php"><b>Bidding</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../contact/index.html"><b>Contact Us</b></a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Code (markup):

My site is currently being tested on a random site of mine, so check it out if you need more information. www.lamefilms.com

 

Create a page called nav.php, stick all your navigation in there and put it in a folder called "includes".

Then on the pages you want the navigation to appear insert the following code;

<?php

$page_a = explode("/",$_SERVER['SCRIPT_URL']);
$page = $page_a[$count($page_a)-1] . "/" . $page_a[count($page_a)];

switch($page){
 
 case 'services/index.php' :

    $services_active = ' class = "active" ';


 break;

// etc ....

}

include 'includes/nav.php';
?>

PHP:

and for each navigation item put in the relevant variable to state whether the navigation is active or not.

Let me know if this helps.

 

Weirfire,

Seems to be a no go at this time. I will try and walk you through the steps I took. First off I created a folder named "includes" in my site directory. It can be found at lamefilms.com/includes. In that folder I put a php file called "nav.php" & inside the "nav.php" file I put the following code:

<div id="navigation">
<ul>
<li><a href="index.php"><b>About Us</b></a></li>
<li><a href="services/index.php"><b>Services</b></a></li>
<li><a href="profile/index.php"><b>Company Profile</b></a></li>
<li><a href="portfolio/index.php"><b>Our Portfolio</b></a></li>
<li><a href="customers/index.php"><b>Bidding </b></a></li>
<li><a href="contact/index.html"><b>Contact Us</b></a></li>
</ul>
</div>

Code (markup):

I then created a page called "navigation.php" also in my home root folder. The page can be found at lamefilms.com/navigation.php I just duplicated the main "index.php" page and took out the navigation and in its place I put this code:

<?php

$page_a = explode("/",$_SERVER['SCRIPT_URL']);
$page = $page_a[$count($page_a)-1] . "/" . $page_a[count($page_a)];

switch($page){
 
case 'index.php' :

$services_active = ' class = "active" ';

break;

}

include 'includes/nav.php';
?>

Code (markup):

I then uploaded everything to my server and got the error message:
"Fatal error: Function name must be a string in /mnt/w0714/d14/s11/b02c5d23/www/lamefilms.com/navigation.php on line 29"

Line 29 is:
"$page = $page_a[$count($page_a)-1] . "/" . $page_a[count($page_a)];"

It was probably just something stupid I did

www.lamefilms.com/includes/nav.php
www.lamefilms.com/navigation.php

Thanks for helping!

 

$count replace by count


Regards

Alex

 

oops. sorry about that.

Need a job Alex? lol

 

The navigation shows up... but I can't get any tabs to appear selected.

Say I am currently at www.lamefilms.com/customers/index.php what needs to go into the line that says "case 'customers/index.php'" because that definitely doesn't work. I also tried a absolute URL with no such luck.

 

You see where I put $services_active....


You need to put that in here;

<div id="navigation">
  <ul>
    <li> <a href="../../index.php"><b>About</b></a></li>
    <li <?=$services_active?>><a href="../../services/index.php"><b>Services</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../profile/index.php"><b>Profile</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../portfolio/index.php"><b>Our Portfolio</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../bidding/index.php"><b>Bidding</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../contact/index.html"><b>Contact Us</b></a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

PHP:

 

Hmm now I have no idea what is going on...

I am not even sure if we are on the same page haha. I want a navigation menu that extends to all of my pages on my site. I want that menu to figure out what page it is on, and choose the appropriate tab to give the class active... It appears as if yours script requires me to tell it what page it's on? Even then I still can't get any of this to work. What is my nav.php file supposed to like like?

<div id="navigation">
  <ul>
    <li> <a href="../../index.php"><b>About</b></a></li>
    <li <?=$services_active?>><a href="../../services/index.php"><b>Services</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../profile/index.php"><b>Profile</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../portfolio/index.php"><b>Our Portfolio</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../bidding/index.php"><b>Bidding</b></a></li>
    <li><a href="../../contact/index.html"><b>Contact Us</b></a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Code (markup):

This is what you gave me...? Did you want me to do something like this?

<div id="navigation">
  <ul>
    <li <?=$index_active?>> <a href="../../index.php"><b>About</b></a></li>
    <li <?=$services_active?>><a href="../../services/index.php"><b>Services</b></a></li>
    <li <?=$profile_active?>><a href="../../profile/index.php"><b>Profile</b></a></li>
    <li <?=$portfolio_active?>><a href="../../portfolio/index.php"><b>Our Portfolio</b></a></li>
    <li <?=$customers_active?>><a href="../../customers/index.php"><b>Bidding</b></a></li>
    <li <?=$contact_active?>><a href="../../contact/index.html"><b>Contact Us</b></a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Code (markup):

Excuse me for not knowing a whole lot about PHP. I am not sure if services is just part of the language, or is how it figures out when to add the "class=active" to the HTML. Then you told me to add this to each of my HTML pages that require a navigation. For our sake we will use an example. Say I want the tab to pop up on my portfolio page, what should the code look like? It would be located at www.lamefilms.com/portfolio/index.php

<?php

$page_a = explode("/",$_SERVER['SCRIPT_URL']);
$page = $page_a[count($page_a)-1] . "/" . $page_a[count($page_a)];

switch($page){
 
case 'portfolio/index.php' :

$portfolio_active = ' class = "active" ';

break;

}

include '../includes/nav.php';
?>

Code (markup):

I changed the case line to where the file is which is portfolio/index.php ? Then I change the place where it did say $services_active to $portfolio_active or no?

Ha sorry about not knowing anything, but I really thought I knew what I was doing at first because I have had done it before, but it wasn't anything like this, but I don't remember much about how I did it.

 

One way of doing this would be to have a variable before you call the includes line;

$page = "portfolio";

PHP:

then in the includes file just do

switch($page){

PHP:

Also the switch case statement should include all pages and should appear in the navigation file.

switch($page){
 
 case 'portfolio/index.php' :
  $portfolio_active = ' class = "active" ';
 break;

 case 'services/index.php' :
  $services_active = ' class = "active" ';
 break;

// etc

}

PHP:

The navigation code was perfect.

 

Thanks I got everything working beautifully! +Rep

 

You're welcome. If you have any "difficult" functionalities you'd like on your site that you'd be willing to pay for give me a shout

 

Ya we are planning on expanding the site with more features in the next few weeks. I think these will probably be out of my skill level, so feel free to email me your contact information so I don't lose you in this post!

syncdaily at gmail dot com

 

Email sent