PHP Include function is not displaying anything

Question

I'm pretty new to web development and I am trying to learn by trying to develop a website of course. However, I am hitting an issue, I don't get why my include function in PHP is not working.

My 'menu.php' file contains:

<?php
echo '
            <li><a href="#" class="current">Home</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">button1</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">button2</a></li>            
            <li><a href="#">button3</a></li>  
            <li><a href="#">button4</a></li> 
            <li><a href="#">button5</a></li> ';
    ?>

My html file contains the following:

...
<nav>
   <ul>
      <?php include 'menu.php'; ?>
   </ul>
</nav> 
...

What am I missing? If I copy the list items from my .php to my .html, it works properly. It works:

 ...
    <nav>
       <ul>
                <li><a href="#" class="current">Home</a></li>
                <li><a href="#">button1</a></li>
                <li><a href="#">button2</a></li>            
                <li><a href="#">button3</a></li>  
                <li><a href="#">button4</a></li> 
                <li><a href="#">button5</a></li> 
       </ul>
    </nav> 
 ...

Thank you in advance.

Your HTML file won't parse PHP unless it has a .php extension (or your server's been configured to parse .html files as PHP files). — j08691
– j08691, Commented Apr 16, 2014 at 16:36

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-16 16:37:20Z

3

When you say:

My html file contains the following:

Do you mean that you have a file like index.html? Because that means that PHP is not being parsed. All that's happening is that you have a weird <?php> element that gets silently ignored as invalid HTML.

Try renaming your file to index.php instead.

As an aside, you should always use the browser's View Source option before saying it doesn't do anything ;)

answered Apr 16, 2014 at 16:37

Niet the Dark Absol

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2 Comments

MrSilent Over a year ago

Exactly, I had index.html. This is exactly what I wanted to know. w3schools wasn't really specific about this matter. Thank you so much.

Niet the Dark Absol Over a year ago

@MrSilent w3schools is a very, very bad reference. See w3fools.com. When learning PHP, the best reference is the Word of God.

ManuelJE · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-16 16:37:49Z

1

You cannot put PHP content in an HTML file, it won't be processed as such. You should rename your .html page to .php.

answered Apr 16, 2014 at 16:37

ManuelJE

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