How to view php on a live webpage?

Unless there is a HUGE lapse in security on the server, you won't be able to see the PHP code itself. (unless you ask the owner to share it with you).

PHP is run on the server and the output (generally HTML, CSS or JS) is sent to the browser for parsing.

There are a fairly decent number of PHP tutorials out there. However, if you are struggling with the general logic and programming aspects, try and wrap your head around variables and if/else statements and then start drawing out some diagrams (some people have also been able to learn the general concepts using something called "pseudo code")

HTH!

~ Jeremy

 

You won't be able to see. I would recommend using a program like Coda where you can edit the files remotely on the server and when you save the file, you just refresh the webpage and see what occurred.

 

The other posters answered well on the main question and I agree with them, so I will just address this piece.

You didn't mention what kind of scripts you want to validate. For JavaScript, the only validator I am aware of is JSLint, which is really more about making sure you use well-formed code, but is nice. I also use the Error Console in the browser to view any errors that come up during execution, which should show you any bad code.

For PHP, I don't know too much in terms of validation. NetBeans will give you live warnings and errors though in your code, which can be handy. It's just a bit overweight though for casual use. Worth checking out though. For PJP I just keep the PHP error log file handy as I am trying out code in MAMP.

 

Check out the Wordpress code. It's all PHP and if you install it on your local machine using MAMP, you can play with it to your heart's content without ever making anything public. Plus, there are tons of tutorials about WP that might help you learn the fundamentals of PHP.

 

You can install MAMP without wordpress and it will allow you to view/edit PHP pages locally. You just have to setup the MAMP software and create a development directory. There is a great howto video if you do a search for installing MAMP on a Mac. Crap... I'll just go find it and post the link below.

http://www.lullabot.com/videos/install-local-web-server-mac-osx

 

True, but if you don't know how to build PHP sites, looking at the Wordpress code and then looking at the HTML it generates in your browser can really help you understand how it works.

 

Perhaps you should try a different, perhaps simpler, book? It really isn't that difficult to pick up the basics of PHP. I wouldn't dream of learning it from online tutorials only, but with a decent book it shouldn't be too hard to pick up the basics.

 

Not if you're learning the wrong way. I'm a designer by training but I've picked up a bunch of different web programming languages as I've needed them. In the beginning I knew what I wanted to do but didn't know how to get there. I didn't even know what terms to google. It can be especially infuriating trying to learn something new if you start too advanced. That's often the case with some of the web tutorials -- they assume you know more than you do. If you don't know what an array is exactly there's no real point to learning an array function. I've found good books much easier to learn from.

In your case, do you understand what each line of your script is doing exactly?

 

Code:

unset($files[array_search('.DS_sStore', $files)]);  

I thought I should point out ."DS_sStore" is spelled wrong.

And the code you've shown so far isn't using conditions to remove things, which is likely why your attempts keep failing.

Here's the doc on the "unset" function.

http://php.net/unset

There a a couple types of conditional statements, for instance theres the if statement which would look like

Code:

if(/*add a condition here like 1+1 = 2, etc..*/){
        //do something
}

Theres also the switch statement:

Code:

switch(/*variable you're trying to test against. lets say its $name*/){
          case($name == "Jen"):
            //do something when $name = Jen
          break;
}

With the switch statement, you can continue to add cases until you cover everything you might want to test against.

Theres also the while loop too.

Hope that helps a bit!

 

You're right, scandir is a function. It outputs an array with all the files in the folder it's pointed to. The unset functions remove values from that array. The foreach then walks through the array and outputs the html to display an image for each entry.

What other conditions are you trying to add?

 

Create an iterator variable that will count along with the loop. Then using the iterator plus the modulus operator you can catch every tenth iteration.

PHP:

$i = 0;
foreach ($files as $file)
{
    // For every tenth iteration, do something special
    if ($i++ % 10 == 0)
    {
        // Do whatever you need
    }
    echo "<a href='$base/$file' rel='lightbox'>        <img class='thumbs' src='$base/$thumbs/$file'>";
}

As an alternative to using the scandir and removing unwanted bits, try out the glob function.

 

Here is my modification of angelwatt's script...

PHP:

$i = 0;
foreach ($files as $file)
{
    // For every tenth iteration, do something special - skip the first one
    if ($i++ % 10 == 0 && $i!=0)
    {
        if($i==10)
                {
                       // do what you want for the first one
                }
        elseif($i==20)
                {
                       // do what you want for the second one
                }
        else
                {
                       // a "default" action if none of the above match
                }


    }
    echo "<a href='$base/$file' rel='lightbox'>        <img class='thumbs' src='$base/$thumbs/$file'>";
}

 

should be <br/>. I'm guessing thats why there isn't a line break.
Or you could use a new line which is "\n"

 

The problem is in designguy79's addition to the code.

PHP:

$i++ % 10 == 0 && $i!=0

In this code the $i++ is a post increment. That means that the $i % 10 code is evaluated and then the $i is incremented. For example, if $i is 10 it evaluates 10 % 10 which returns a 0 and then $i is increased by one to 11.

The problem is that designguy79's code is checking if $i is 10. The solution is to adjust the if statement to check when $i is 11.

PHP:

    // For every tenth iteration, do something special - skip the first one 
    if ($i++ % 10 == 0 && $i!=0) 
    { 
        if($i==11) 
                { 
echo "<p> This is the photo's of the way it was done.</p>"; 
                } 
        elseif($i==21) 
                { 
                       // do what you want for the second one 
                } 
        else 
                { 
                       // a "default" action if none of the above match 
                } 


    }

Alternatively you could change the initial if clause to a pre increment:

PHP:

++$i % 10 == 0 && $i!=0

The problem with doing that is that the paragraph will then show up after the 9th image. The solution is to set $i = -1 instead of 0 initially.

You also need to change .DS_sStore to .DS_Store .

A good way to solve problems like this is to print out all the variable to see what they're doing. Instead of outputting the images have it output the $i value, the value of $i % 10, and the file name. That way you can really see what's happening.

EDIT: And just to show you that there's often more than one way to skin a cat here's the way I would have done it:

PHP:


<?php 
  
// settings 
$base = "data/retaining-walls";
$thumbs = "thumbs"; 
  
$files = scandir($base); 
unset($files[0], $files[1]); 
unset($files[array_search('.DS_Store', $files)]); 

$chunk = array_chunk($files, 10);


// Define Paragraphs
$paragraph[1] = "<p>First Paragraph</p>";
$paragraph[2] = "<p>Second Paragraph</p>";


foreach($chunk as $i => $filearray)
{
    if ($paragraph[$i])
        echo "$paragraph[$i]";
    else if ($i > 0)
        echo "<p>Default Paragraph</p>";
    
    foreach ($filearray as $file)
    {
        echo "<a href='$base/$file' rel='lightbox'><img class='thumbs' src='$base/$thumbs/$file'><br/>";
    }
    
}

?> 


 

Use CSS!

PHP:

.thumbs{display: inline;}


This will cause the images to appear in rows as wide as the container they are in, in this case the paragraph which may actually be as wide as the browser window.

If you want to limit this to say four images at most on a row then you will need another condition to output the closing tag and open another paragraph.

 

They're showing up vertically because you're inserting a br tag with the linked image, which will make them go to the next line. Images are already inline elements so using CSS to make them inline is unnecessary.