But now with the advent of ASP.NET 2.0 Master Pages offer a more complete templating alternative. With Master Pages an entire template common to the site is stored in one file with a .master extension. Developers add a ContentPlaceHolder control inside a Master Page to indicate where they would like their page specific content to appear. Then one or more Web Forms may be set up to automatically dress themselves with the shared visual components defined in the Master Page.
So is it possible to make PHP emulate this behavior? To some degree, yes, with output buffering and one server-side include file that represents the "Master Page." Lets say we are aiming to create our HTML by combining this template file and a content file (we'll call these master.php and index.php, respectfully). Our simplified example will aim to achieve the following end result:
The template that will act as our "Master Page" will need to contain all aspects of the design labeled "Template Specific." Since no such control like the ContentPlaceHolder exists, we will use PHP variables to indicate where we would like our page specific content to appear.
master.php
<html>
<head>
<title><?php echo $pagetitle; ?></title>
</head>
<body style="margin-top:20px;margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;">
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0"border="0">
<tr bgcolor="#33FFFF">
<td colspan="5"><h2>Template Specific Header</h2></td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#EEEEEE">
<td nowrap><a href=#">Navigation Link 1</a></td>
<td nowrap><a href="#">Navigation Link 2</a></td>
<td nowrap><a href="#">Navigation Link 3</a></td>
<td nowrap><a href="#">Navigation Link 4</a></td>
<td width="100%"> </td>
</tr>
</table>
<br />
<table width="100%" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td width="30%" valign="top" bgcolor="#EEEEEE"><strong>Template Specific
Navigation</strong><br /><br />
<a href="#">Link 1</a><br />
<a href="#">Link 2</a><br />
<a href="#">Link 3</a><br />
</td>
<td width="70%" valign="top"><?php
echo $pagemaincontent;
?></td>
</tr>
</table>
<br />
<table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10" border="0">
<tr>
<td colspan="2" bgcolor="#33FFFF">Template Specific Footer</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Now any pages that we would like to have adhere to the template only need to define the page specific variables and include our master.php file.
index.php
<?php
//Buffer larger content areas like the main page content
ob_start();
?>
<em>Page Specific Content Text</em><br />
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing
elit, sed nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
dolore magna aliat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim
veniam, quis nostrud exercita ullamcorper
suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex consequat.
<br /><br />
Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in
vulputate velit molestie consequat, vel illum
dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis ats eros et
accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit
prasent up zzril delenit augue duis dolore te
feugait nulla facilisi. Lorem euismod tincidunt
erat volutpat.
<?php
//Assign all Page Specific variables
$pagemaincontent = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
$pagetitle = "Page Specific Title Text";
//Apply the template
include("master.php");
?>
Even though it's not perfectly aligned with ASP.NET's Master Page feature set, the technique described above allows us to consolidate what might otherwise be numerous server-side include files.
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