PHP Equivalent of Master page in ASP.NET

Question

Is there any way to achieve the master page concept of ASP.NET in PHP?

Answer 1

You could use a template engine like Smarty:

Although Smarty is known as a "Template Engine", it would be more accurately described as a "Template/Presentation Framework." That is, it provides the programmer and template designer with a wealth of tools to automate tasks commonly dealt with at the presentation layer of an application.

Answer 2

I made a simple proof-of-concept for a asp-like master pages in PHP. You can get it here: http://code.google.com/p/phpmasterpages/

Answer 3

As other said, the way to go is to use a template engine. My preference goes to the Zend Framework, which is a bit more than just templates ;), but has a nice implementation of a layout with Zend_Layout that is very close to Master Pages in ASP.Net.

Check the quickstart guide to have an idea of how this works, and have a look at the full doc to see the possibilities offered by the framework. Plus, using the framework gives you a nice MVC architecture and SEO-friends rewritten URLs...

Answer 4

You can use auto_prepend_file and auto_append_file together with output buffering.

Answer 5

Maybe just use include() since the variables in both file are in the same scope. Also ob_start() can record the output to the buffer so that the html codes can output later.

Answer 6

The best and easy way to do is using include as other said. Create a header.php and footer.php and include them in every page you want to use. The approach is bit different compare to asp.net master pages but is as powerful as master pages