A Guide To The Include Command For PHP

By Chris Channing

The top paid web designers got where they are today because they know how to code quickly, efficiently, and to the requests of their clients. Knowing PHP as a language and using its many functions or constructs is going to be mandatory if one is going to rise to the top. Somewhere along the way, the PHP include command will need to be learned.

The include construct in PHP is actually a lot like a function, but we call it a language construct simply because we view it as a piece of the PHP language. The include construct in particular is going to enable a web developer to include a remote file into the currently running application. It may seem unexciting, but this is a very big time saver.

The PHP include is going to save us time by allowing us to edit multiple files through a single file. If we had a navigation bar that needed changed, we would normally have to go to every page and change it if we were using HTML. But with PHP we can just reference a remote file, and dynamically change each and every page.

PHP includes also save lines of code, which is great for organization and troubleshooting. It may not actually be saving any performance of the server, but it is still going to benefit the developer more than it will hurt them. PHP includes are great to take out many lines of code and replace them with a single include construct, which, only takes one line to use.

Another good function of the PHP include is to keep things in working order. If an include fails, we are going to get a visible error message. Now this isn't always a good thing, since some error messages will expose confidential information about the running script. In more precise situations, we would use the require construct to halt the entire script should it not complete correctly.

Because PHP will only function under the PHP extension, web developers should get into the practice of forgetting the HTML extension and switching to PHP. If they don't, the time will come when they see that PHP is the better alternative, and fixing the extension on hundreds of pages isn't going to be much fun at that point in time.

In Conclusion

PHP is a great language for web developers to learn, but not only because of time saving constructs such as PHP include. PHP is a very robust and powerful language- and is an industry staple for web designers to learn and use in their works. To stay the top in one's field, they'll need an edge on the rest of their competition. Pick up the intricacies of PHP includes, and a web designer is on their way to success.

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