-----Original Message----- From: Scott Bounds [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 11 January 2007 07:16 To: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP] Please Help with simple Noob problem
Arno, you nailed it right on the head. You and someone else told me that. I am glad that you did because that is exactly what the problem was. Thanks for being patient and understanding. Scott -- Sure, all part of the learning experience. Understanding why you can view an html file in a browser but not a php file is essential: when viewing an html file, it's the browser (client-side) that's processing and rendering the html code, but the browser can't process php code. For that you need the webserver (server-side). Browsers are built to understand and process html and javascript, but only a webserver can understand and process php script. Unless you're developing or learning, the browser and the webserver are almost always on different machines (that's the whole point of the internet!). In your case (and most cases) the webserver is Apache. Apache treats html files and php files differently. In the case of html files it just gets the file and sends it back to the browser, as it was requested to do. But in the case of php files it opens the file and starts processing it, i.e. running it as a program. Apache processes (runs) the php script which generates the html script, which Apache then sends back to the browser. The browser then processes that html script and displays the result. It's basically the same concept for all server-side scripting. When you type http:// in the browser address bar, you're telling the browser to communicate with a webserver, using the hypertext protocol. When you type file:// in the browser address bar, you're telling the browser to communicate with your local file system. Try http://local-directory/file.html and you'll see it won't work, whereas file://local-directory/file.html will work just fine (assuming you've got file.html in local-directory). Hope that makes sense. Arno -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
