Tuesday, April 22, 2025

PHP Include, Require

You are advised to check corresponding YouTube video at the end of this article.

Include and "require" are language constructs that allow you to include the contents of one file in another PHP file.

The difference between the two is that require will generate a fatal error if the file to be included cannot be found, while include will only generate a warning and continue execution of the script.

We use include and require to break up our code into smaller, reusable components. For example, we might put our database connection code into a separate file and then include it in all the files that need to access the database. This way, if we need to change the database connection details, we only need to make the change in one place.

It's smart to use include and require when you have common code that needs to be shared across multiple files, or when you want to modularize your code into smaller, more manageable chunks. It can also improve code organization and readability.

navigation.php


<?php 
echo '
<a href="">Home</a> - 
<a href="">Products</a> - 
<a href="">About</a> - 
<a href="">Contact</a>';

?>

This is an example of creating a navigation menu using HTML and PHP code. It creates a simple horizontal menu with four links: Home, Products, About, and Contact. The HTML code is enclosed in a PHP echo statement, which allows it to be dynamically generated by PHP code.

The links can be replaced with actual URLs to make the menu functional.

index.php


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head></head>
<body>

<h1>Main Heading on Home Page</h1>

<?php include 'navigation.php'; ?>

<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>

<?php include 'navigation.php'; ?>

</body>
</html>

This code includes the navigation.php file twice in an HTML page. The navigation.php file contains the navigation menu links that are included in both instances on the page.

Using include allows you to reuse code across multiple pages, which can be helpful for maintaining consistency and reducing redundancy. It's smart to use include when you have common HTML or PHP code that you need to use across multiple pages.

In this case, including the navigation menu twice may not be necessary, but it could be useful if you want to show the same menu at the top and bottom of the page for easy navigation.

index.php


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head></head>
<body>

<h1>Main Heading on Home Page</h1>

<?php include 'navigation.php'; ?>

<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>

<?php require 'navigation_1.php'; ?>

<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>
<p>Main Content</p>

</body>
</html>

The include statement is used to include the navigation.php file, which contains the navigation links for the website. This code will be inserted at the location where the include statement is written.

The require statement is also used to include another file navigation_1.php, which may contain some critical code or data. If the file is not found, the script execution will stop with a fatal error. It is recommended to use require instead of include for important files, as it ensures that the file is present and can be accessed before continuing with the script.

In this particular example, both include and require are used for the same file, which may not make sense, but it's just for demonstration purposes.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Tkinter Introduction - Top Widget, Method, Button

First, let's make shure that our tkinter module is working ok with simple  for loop that will spawn 5 instances of blank Tk window .  ...