The idea is simple. You develop your website at
home, using all PHP features you like, such as
inclusion of text files, extensive use of
pre-defined and user-declared functions, classes,
templates, and so on.
Once you are satisfied with your work, you could use
your preferred browser to view all your pages,
one-by-one, and save them in a directory of your
hard disk, changing file extensions from .php4 to
.html. But this approach would be quite
time-consuming, expecially if you have several pages
and need to re-generate them quite often.
Using lynx is a good alternative, since it can fetch
the pages from the webserver and return them into
the standard output. You could then write a batch
procedure (a shell script) such as
lynx -source http://localhost/dynpages/index.php4 >
C:\Documents\StaticPages\mywebsite\index.html
lynx -source http://localhost/dynpages/page2.php4 >
C:\Documents\StaticPages\mywebsite\page2.html
lynx -source http://localhost/dynpages/page3.php4 >
C:\Documents\StaticPages\mywebsite\page3.html
lynx -source http://localhost/dynpages/page4.php4 >
C:\Documents\StaticPages\mywebsite\page4.html
The example here is for Windows, under other
platforms you should obviously change the path after
the > operator.
This way, when you want to regenerate all your
pages, you just need to launch your batch file.
If you have a number of files, and/or their names
change often, you could think about using PHP to
generate the lines of your batch file:
<?php
define('SLASH', '\'); //* this is for use under
Win9x;
//* under linux, use '/'.
define('CRLF', chr(13).chr(10));
$httpbase="http://localhost/samplesite"; //* local
URL for your pages
$dyndir="E:/xitami/webpages/samplesite"; //* (do not
use backslashes)
//* where your webserver keeps your pages
$staticdir="C:/windows/desktop/samplewebsite/generatedpages/online";
//* where you want your pages to be put
$parameters="?outputas=online"; //* parameters you
might need
function changeslashes($path) {
return str_replace("/", SLASH, $path); //* useful
under Windows
};
function subdir($path) {
global $dyndir;
if ($dyndir!=$path) {
return substr($path, strlen($dyndir)-strlen($path));
}
else {
return '';
};
};
function destination($path) {
global $staticdir;
$dest=$staticdir . subdir($path);
$dest=changeslashes($dest); //* useful under Win
return $dest;
};
function searchdir($dirname) {
global $httpbase, $parameters;
$handle=opendir($dirname);
while ($file=readdir($handle)) {
if ($file !='.' && $file !='..') {
if (is_dir($dirname.'/'.$file)) {
if (!is_dir(destination($dirname).'/'.$file)) {
echo "mkdir " . destination($dirname). SLASH .
"$file" . CRLF;
}
searchdir($dirname.'/'.$file);
} else {
if (substr($file, -5)==".php4") {
$newname=substr($file, 0, strlen($file)-5).'.html';
echo "lynx -source $httpbase" . subdir($dirname) .
"/$file$parameters > " . destination($dirname) .
SLASH . "$newname" . CRLF;
} else {
echo "copy " . changeslashes($dirname) .
SLASH. "$file " . destination($dirname) . SLASH.
"$file" . CRLF;
}
}
}
closedir($handle);
};
searchdir($dyndir);
?>
The script is recursive, and will generate a batch
file to generate all your PHP pages (making them
normal HTML files) and to just copy all other files.
You might capture the output of this PHP script into
a batch file and run it at once. For instance:
PHP -q generatepages.php4 > generatepages.bat
generatepages.bat
This can be a batch procedure on its own, and so you
need only a command to generate all the pages of
your web site.
I wrote and tested this script under Windows. It
should also work under Linux, provided that you
change something here and there (you wouldn't need
to change slashes to back slashes, you would use cp
instead of copy, etc.).
As you may notice, you can encode in the URL address
(the query string) one or more parameters, as usual.
I often take advantage of this, using parameters to
control which stylesheet to use, or which content to
display on my pages.
To make this clear, I'll show you the values I give
to the outputas parameter:
online / to use when you generate static pages to be
published at an internet site (links have to get
.html extension, links to directories have no file
name added);
offline / to use when you generate static pages to
be viewed off line, with no webserver involved
(links have to get .html extension, links to
directories have to be added index.html);
print / to use when you want to print the pages you
are generating (I choose a different stylesheet, and
write remote URLS in brackets after linked text)
Since the value of parameters is available for all
the functions you call in your webpage, you can make
good use of this.
While you develop your website, you will normally
use the extension .php3 or .php4 for your files. If
you write the code for a link straight in your HTML
code, then you would have broken links when you
generate .html files (since the name of the files
have changed).
As a workaround for this, I normally use this trick:
instead of writing the normal code for a link
<A HREF="page2link.php4">linked text</A>
I call a PHP function
<?PHP makelink("page2link", "linked text"); ?>
which, by default, outputs exactly the same HTML
code as above, but that could output something
different when given specific parameters in the
query string.
<?php
function makelink($linkedtext, $linkhref, $kind=0,
$fragment="", $title="", $target="_top") {
//*$kind values: 0 means internal; 1 means external;
global $outputas;
$class = ($kind==0)? 'internal' : 'external';
if ($kind==0) {
if (substr($linkhref, -1)=='/') {
if ($outputas=='offline') {
$linkhref .= "index.html"; //* you can't have links
to dirs when offline
}
}
else {
if ($outputas=='online' || $outputas=='offline') {
$linkhref.='.html';
}
else {
$linkhref.='.php4';
}
};
};
echo "<A HREF=\"$linkhref$fragment\"
CLASS=\"$class\" TITLE=\"$title\"
TARGET=\"$target\">";
echo "$linkedtext</A>";
if ($outputas=='print' && $kind==1) {
echo " <SMALL>[$linkhref]</SMALL>";
}; //* for printed things, I want to write URLs in
brackets after links
};
?>
Another little thing. Since your generated files
could be in different directories, you could need to
differentiate the path for some resources (for
instance, the stylesheet, or the home page).
For this things, you can guess at which level is
your page in the hierarchy of directories, and then
produce a relative path to be used (for instance,
"../../") when needed.
You'll just have to write this on the top of your
pages:
<?php
$level=sizeof(split('/', $PHP_SELF))-3;
$rp = $level>0 ? str_repeat("../", $level) : './';
?>
