Dynamic Database Driven CSS 2.0

Question

Ok, so I am trying to improve on my previous question about dynamic CSS driven by a MYSQL database. i have gotten this to work for one CSS class but not for more than one. What i am trying to do is put one while statement inside of another. my database consists of this at present:

table styles
id - class - style - setting - page
1    header  width   1000px    index
2    header  height  200px     index
3    footer  width   1000px    index

my code is as follows:

$pname = $_SERVER['REQUESTED_URI'];
$class_query = mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT(class) AS class FROM styles WHERE pname='".$pname."'");
$style_query = mysql_query("SELECT style, setting FROM styles WHERE pname='".$pname."' AND class='".$class_result['class']."'");
echo "<style>";
while($class_result_row = mysql_fetch_array($class_query,MYSQL_ASSOC))  {
    echo ".".$class_result_row['class']."{";
    while($style_result_row = mysql_fetch_array($style_query,MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
        echo $style_result_row['style'].":".$style_result_row['setting'].";";
    }
    echo "}";
}
echo "</style>";

This works great for the index content but it does not show the footer styles. The main difference between this and what I had previously asked here is that instead of manually setting up the same script for each and every page to load the page specific content I want to wrap this in a function and call it once in the header and be done with it. i also have tried to set a $GLOBALS and $SESSION variable for the page name but the results are the same. on a side note i also used the variables without the extra quotes and periods and got the same results too. thanks in advance everyone! --John

As an aside, there are probably better ways of tackling the problem of dynamically styling a page. I don't know what your goal is here but this solution might not more difficult to maintain, it can increase page size and does not allow the browser to cache CSS if it doesn't change. Consider using a CSS file per page (i.e. "index.css" loaded for the "index" page, etc.). You could also build up a hierarchy of CSS pages - one for page structure (header, footer, etc.) and others for page specific styles. — dariom
– dariom, Commented May 19, 2012 at 2:52

dariom · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-19 02:53:30Z

1

I think you have to execute your style query every time you iterate through the class query results. Try something like:

$pname = $_SERVER['REQUESTED_URI'];
$class_query = mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT(class) AS class FROM styles WHERE pname='".$pname."'");
echo "<style>";
while($class_result_row = mysql_fetch_array($class_query,MYSQL_ASSOC))  {
    echo ".".$class_result_row['class']."{";
    $style_query = mysql_query("SELECT style, setting FROM styles WHERE pname='".$pname."' AND class='".$class_result_row['class']."'");

    while($style_result_row = mysql_fetch_array($style_query,MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
        echo $style_result_row['style'].":".$style_result_row['setting'].";";
    }
    echo "}";
}
echo "</style>";

edited May 19, 2012 at 2:53

answered May 19, 2012 at 2:46

dariom

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3 Comments

John Stapleton Over a year ago

And that is the reason I come here first! Thank you sooooo Much, that has been bugging me for like a week now. I knew there was a simpler way of calling it up and its nice to see the commands i used were right this time...Just a matter of placing them where they belong.

dariom Over a year ago

No problem. I'm glad I could help :-) See my comment I added to your question and think carefully if this is really the approach you want though. Ask another question if you'd like to learn more of other approaches!

John Stapleton Over a year ago

lol, I definitely will ask more! And i have done a lot of thinking on this and for now this seems to be the best answer i can come up with. I am building my own game/forum/social site and a lot of the pages are going to have a similar framework but have different tweeks per element. like a logged in area and non logged in area using the same pages. My header.php is where i call this function and i have already have settings in the database beyond what i typed for this example to accommodate that. It should be awesome when its done, with a backend to change the settings on the fly

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