PHP Newbie

[wbodger]

So, I am used to ASP, but was given a little issue to deal with and my attempts didn't quite pan out. I have an includes file for the menu which selects the proper style depending on which tab you are on. So, I am trying to define the section variable at the top of each page and then use it to determine whether or not to mark it as active. Here is the code that I have:

Before the opening HTML tag

<? php
	$section="QA";
?>

then within the body of the menu.php include file

<? php if $section="Products" echo "<li id='active'>"; else echo "<li>"; ?>

And that last bit of code gives me this error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_IF in /mnt/w0310/d19/s05/b024806b/[URL unfurl="true"]www/canelonesfoods.cn/English/menu.php[/URL] on line 33

Any thoughts?

Willie

 

[Vragabond]

I suggest that rather than guessing what might work in PHP, you familiarize yourself with the basics. The PHP Online Manual is excellent and will help you much more than we can by correcting each individual line for you. I suggest you start with sections on comparison operators and control structures.

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[jpadie]

I agree with Vragabond.
However as a caveat to other readers, I believe that the starting tags for php (unless short tags are turned on) should not include a space

<?php

If short tags are turned on, php will try to find a constant called

php

and most probably throw a notice when it can't find one.

http://fr2.php.net/manual/en/language.basic-syntax.php

 

[vacunita]

Additionally and unlike ASP, PHP's syntax requires the parenthesis or round brackets around IF constructs and other functional statements.

if [red]([/red]$section=="Products"[red])[/red]

You may find this of help:

http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/php_syntax.asp

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[wbodger]

Ahhh... thanks for the inputs. My biggest question (which I didn't state very well), was if this idea would work with PHP. It looks like it will, I just need to clean up my code a bit/ Again, thank you for your help!