Setting a variable in a chunk via user input.

104 Posts

scraf Reply #1, 19 years, 8 months ago

Edit: third post is relevant, the first two are an excercise in "how not to....."

This is a "How should I...." question, more than an hour of searching around the forum hasn’t got me any further.

My goal is for a visitor to my website to be able to change the colours of the website.

I am doing this so far by having a dynamic "css.php" page, as in..

<?php
header('content-type:text/css');

$colour_scheme = $_GET['colour_scheme'];

$backgrounds = array('#FFFFFF','#B4E39D','#F6F7DD');
$background = $backgrounds[$colour_scheme];

I then have this in the header of the template...

<link rel="stylesheet" href="[(base_url)]assets/templates/template/{{Css_path}}" type="text/css" media="screen" />

with the ((Css_path}} chunk containing...

css.php?colour_scheme=0

Now, what I would like is that the website visitor could use a form to change that $colour_scheme variable in the chunk, and eventually I would like the chunk to react to a cookie ( or some other method ) so that the whole site gets that colour scheme, for at least as long as the session.

The reason for all this ( which may or not be a crazy way of going about things ) is I need the colours of the website to alter, I don’t want to have duplicate templates and have to alter them all, the same goes for the css file.

( I’m not trying to do a Zen Garden thing here, I’m thinking accessibilty ( colour blindness ) )

So, am I trying re-invent the wheel here?

104 Posts

scraf Reply #2, 19 years, 8 months ago

Ok, got as far as realising I need a snippet...

<?php
$css_var = isset($_REQUEST['css_var']) ? $_REQUEST['css_var'] : "1";
return "$css_var";
?>

... all I need is to get that $css_var from the front page and I’ll be off........ EDIT: and I’ve got that far....

<form method=post action="[~[*id*]~]">
<input type=hidden name=css_var value="0" />
<input type=submit />
</form>

.. just need to learn how to set a cookiie I guess.

:)

104 Posts

scraf Reply #3, 19 years, 8 months ago

Well for those of you sitting on the edge of your chairs wondering if I ever managed to work this one out, it turned out to be really really easy.

All I needed to do was pass a url to the current page ( for some reason I thought that would be impossible using friendly url’s until I happenned on a MaxiGallery that was sending variables via the url ).

After writing snippets and messing around with all the palava above, I found this syntax...

<a href=[~[*id*]~]?user_style=0>00 grey</a><br />
<a href=[~[*id*]~]?user_style=1>01 lime</a><br />

I then use that variable to change the css file, I set a cookie, and every page reads that cookie...

<?php
if(isset($_GET[user_style])) // if user_style has been requested by the user in the url
{
      $user_style = $_GET[user_style]; // define user_style
      setcookie("user_style",$_GET[user_style],time() + (86400 * 30), "/", "", 0); // set cookie for 30 days
}else  // else if there is no user_style variable in the url
{
   if(isset($_COOKIE['user_style'])) // see if there is a cookie
      {
      	$user_style = $_COOKIE['user_style']; // if so set user_style to cookie user_style
      }else{
      	$user_style = 0; // if not use default
      }
};
?>

I then throw the variable into the css.php file using...

<link rel="stylesheet" href="[(base_url)]assets/templates/scraf01/colours_css.php?colour_scheme=<?php echo $user_style; ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />

( I have since split the stylesheet, one concentrating on layout, one on colours )

The stylesheet starts off with this.....you should get the idea

<?php
header('content-type:text/css');
$colour_scheme = $_GET['colour_scheme'];

switch($colour_scheme){
	case '0':
    // gray scale
    $background = "#FFF";
		$header_bg = "#FFF";
?>

Well, that was so much fun I forgot to watch a rugby game, hope it comes in use for someone sometime.