Can we include an HTML file / snippet from another HTML file?
My use case is related to how a website is built; in a simple form, a site typically has the same header and footer across the board. It is pretty straightforward if the site is equipped with e.g. PHP so you can do something like the include statement; we can contain the header and footer in separate files and include them later. But, what if the site is purely static i.e. no "back-end" support?
One thing that I had done in the past is to utilize templates in Dreamweaver. This worked but I'd prefer something that is more product-independent.
Thanks.
What you're looking for is Server Side Includes. It used to be available on most hostings, no idea what the situation is today.
Actually, a simple system based on a makefile and, why not, php's command line version, might also be helpful: a simple makefile that visits all php files in a directory, feeds it to php (eg, processes page decoration and stuff) and redirects the output to a corresponding html file should be enough to generate a set of uploadable, 100% static html files.
SSI is a great option if it is available to you as already suggested, I have always used PHP personally but as PHP is not available and if SSI isn't available then there is a JavaScript option as well.
The great thing with the JS option is the server doesn't need to have support for it due to the include scripts being client side. The bad thing is if the client doesn't have JS enabled in the browser the includes won't work. In saying that the vast majority of website users have JS enabled and this is displayed by most websites in the world who employ JS in 1 way or another.
Examples, the first one I found with a 2 second Google uses jQuery, have a look at the info here
There are also some AJAX plugins that could potentially be used for this at the jQuery website if it is a path you're interested in going down.
I hope this helps you :-)
Related
I have a small static website and every page of this site has a menu and a footer.
What is the best way to make sure changes in the menu and the footer only need to be done in one place and enable me to easily update all my pages which consist of them.
I am looking for some kind of simple template system that enables me to combine files together.
I have looked a bit into ruby .erb files but they seem too complicated for what I want to achieve as I would have to install rails and enable my webserver to use that.
For a simple site, there's nothing wrong with doing server side includes. Simply create the HTML snippets (they don't even have to be fully formed HTML) for your menu and footer. Then on each page, add the appropriate
<!-- #include virtual="/footer.html" -->
statement in the proper location. Since you're on a Debian server, I'm pretty sure Apache wil already have this enabled by default.
It may seem antiquated, but my wife works for a company that does a lot of maintenance for small websites and they still take this approach and it works just fine.
If your site goes above 10 pages, then I'd say look into some of the templating systems, just to alleviate the need to remember to add your SSI on each new page you create.
you could have a look at some Web Templating Systems and decide based on the language/platform you are familiar with
I use Octopress. It's a static site generator built on top of Jekyll which uses markdown for content markup and specific template language for constructing pages. So if you only need a site with a few pages you should try jekyll.
It requires for your system to have ruby since all site generation is done on client side and afterwards the site is deployed via rsync.
Try searching the internet for static site generator. It gives dozen of solutions in all sort of languages: Python, Ruby, PHP, Haskell, Sh, Bash…
Do you need to combine those on the server side?
For a small static site I simply created a little local script (I used PowerShell, but feel free to use whatever you want or have at your disposal) that does deployment from the local source files which represent the templates. While maybe not as flexible on the template side as full-blown templating engines it's easy, fast and works well for quite a while. Also it runs locally and doesn't need anything except a simple web server on the server side, cutting down on potential vulnerabilities.
I've used WML ("Website Meta Language"; NB nothing to do with the WML associated with mobile and WAP!) on Debian for years to maintain consistent templated header/sidebar/footer boilerplate for pages on my ISP's static page hosting.
If I update the code on my CSS stylesheet, all pages that pull the code from that sheet will be updated with the adjustments made. Is there a way to do this with actual information that can be viewed a web page(s)? I want to make changes on one page and have all desired pages adjusted.
can anyone push me in the right direction or direct me to which tags I would use?
Thank you
There are several ways to do this, although none quite like CSS.
Server Side Code
This includes languages like ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby, and many others. Using server side code, you can create content areas that are usually controlled by a database (MySQL is a free database). When you store your content in a database, you can then pull that content out via server side code and place it on the page.
AJAX
AJAX is a relatively new method that also usually leverages the use of a database. Basically, when you need content, you send a call to your server (or database) via Javascript and it responds with the content you requested. You can then format the content how you wish. There are literally thousands of questions on StackOverflow about how to use AJAX. Most of them will reference jQuery.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
While this is similar to the first two methods I listed (in that they usually leverage one or both methods) CMSs are different because they abstract the need to actually do any of the work yourself. They are usually pre-built systems where you just plug in your content and make some tweaks and you're good to go. Some examples of CMSs are Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal.
jQuery.load()
If you get into jQuery at all, there is an easy method you could use to kind of replicate what you're trying to accomplish (one file that controls all your content). While it is definitely not the most highly-recommended method, so long as your site is not too big, it could work nicely. Basically you would put all your content into an .html file and separate them into divs with ids. Then to pull content from that file, you would use jQuery.load() plus the page fragments option (scroll down a bit on the jQuery.load() page) to pull in the desired content. Again, this is not really how I would go about doing it, but it is an option for a small bit of content you want to quickly change on the fly without incurring the overhead of setting up and maintaining a database.
If I understand you correctly, you want to apply the ideas of CSS (provide some handy definitions, use them everywhere) to "the rest of the HTML code".
If you are on a web server, you can do that using one of these technologies:
Server Side Includes
PHP
JSP
and probably many more that allow external file inclusion.
Sounds like you need either server-side includes or JavaScript AJAX loading.
If it's just the tag that you only want to know, then there are only two available tags (or markup) to call JavaScript codes. It's either:
Inline: <script> ... code goes here ... </script>
External: <script src="filepath.js"></script>.
But if you are dealing with XHTML, then you have to include a CDATA between the <script> and </script>, e.g. <script><![CDATA[ ... inline code goes here ... ]]></script>.
However, if that doesn't answer your question, then a tag is not what you need, but JavaScript codes.
Let say you are working on a website template that has many pages (index.html, blog.html, contact.html...). You start by designing the home page and then move on to other pages. While you are on other pages, you think of some improvements and these improvements must affect the whole website.
So I return to each page and make the change. This is quite unproductive especially when you have 6 or more pages and sometimes you forget to update the change.
If it were PHP, I would do
require ('header.php');
This worked for me well. But right now, I'm working on HTML and don't really like to transform to PHP and then again to HTML.
So do you have a specific method/way of doing this?
You can use server-side includes to get the effect you want, if your server supports them.
You can use PHP to include a number of smaller HTML files. The PHP script is minimal. No "transform" is required. Just something like require('header.html'); require('body.html'); require('footer.html'); or some such.
If what you're worried about is having to write a lot of PHP, you can use a templating engine such as Smarty TPL to clearly separate the code from the pages and minimize the amount of coding you have to do. This has the added advantage of having HTML "generators" that will automatically do things like producing radio buttons for you or obfuscating email addresses.
You can use CSS to centralize styles for your page so you can make site-wide appearance, layout, and design changes by modifying the stylesheet.
If you're working with HTML pages, (e.g. including extensions .htm and .html), consider using Server Side Includes. This approach works with basic HTML parsing, and is supported by most/all major web servers, including Apache and IIS.
Simply include this text in your .html file:
<!--#include virtual="header.html" -->
The web server will then fetch the markup in that file, and will insert it inline in the page it's currently serving.
You could use PHP as a pre-processor, a code generator. Run the PHP on your local computer, then save the static HTML pages it produces and post them to production. You could write a little script to visit each of your PHP pages and save the corresponding HTML. Then you could have the convenience of PHP at design time and the simplicity of HTML in production.
If you use dynamic pages like JSP or asp.net, you can have your page template included, and then content added. But what if you have no server-side component and all pages are just HTML/JS? You can of course create a template then copy it for each page, but then if you want to change something you risk having to modify every page, even if you put most styling in CSS properly.
Are there any non-awful ways to do this? I could see that an iframe could be used to load the content into the central page but that sounds nasty. Does HTML provide any way to include a base file and add to it?
You can use Server Side Includes to include other files on the server. It's similar to scripting languages like ASP or php, but SSI is usually supported by the server directly, so it's available on many servers, even if there is scripting language available.
The answer is still templates. Just process them offline instead of on the server. I like to use ttree for this.
You can create the pages offline and render into HTML, and deploy those to the site.
One option might be: https://github.com/thewml but it does feel ... "too much". I also saw asciidoc for creating sites ( https://asciidoc.org/ ) and I also used several times doxygen for that ( http://www.doxygen.nl/ ).
I also saw CMS that create static HTML files, but hey are no longer maintained.
I know that with a large site you would want to separate footers, menus, etc so that updating that file would push the update out to every page that contains the item.
Is the same recommended for a small site made purely in HTML/CSS, or is it simpler/easier/standard to code out the menu in each page and update each page when a change is needed?
I don't necessarily want to bring in PHP or etc onto this website, but the ease of updating menus would be nice. Any other suggestions? I've heard Server Side Includes might be one option... is that considered "pure html" or is more required to be set up on the server?
Thanks!
Unless you've got a site consisting of one page, do yourself a favor and have some separate files with your header/footer/other repeated elements.
That way you only have to make one change and its done. No matter how meticulous you think you are, you will inevitably forget a page somewhere on an update any other way. Its a human thing.
If its "just" HTML, and you're not using a server-side language, then you are correct in that you'll want to use server side includes. Check with your host to see if it will process SSI on regular *.htm/*.html files or if you need to use the *.shtm/*.shtml extension.
Server side includes isn't html, but it's not really coding either. It's probably your best option if you don't want to get PHP or some other coding solution involved.
It's mainly just a function of the webserver that you are using, and whether it's enabled for the site.
Here's a tutorial on them for Apache.
Here's documentation for IIS.
There are tons of different ways to approach this problem, but ultimately if you want to make changes on your side and have them reflected in lots of pages you're going to have to have either some kind of server side processing, which means PHP or JSP or something along those lines, or you're going to have to have some sort of process that generates your site statically updating lots of repeated items wherever they occur, but ultimately that would just be a compile time solution that's equivalent to some other server side approach.
If you're comfortable working in Java / JSP, then simple JSP includes might do everything you need. If they don't, then you could go for a full blown Portlets API application. I'm sure other languages have equally valid approaches, so ultimately its decideding what you're most comfortable with.
Server side includes would be "pure HTML" from the browser's standpoint, but then so would PHP.
If you didn't want to Server Side Includes, you could dynamically build them using JavaScript or a library such as jQuery, and just include a .js file in each of your pages.
If it's really small / mostly text-based content, you could just have one page with hidden DIVs that are switched in. Then it'll also be very snappy and self-contained if someone wants to view it offline.
It is very easy to do this with php. This is some sample index.php page i've built:
http://pastebay.com/51887
And for example in "includes/navigation.php" i have this:
http://pastebay.com/51888
So in everypage you have just put that from first link and when you want to edit navigation, just edit "includes/navigation.php". :)