Quick Tip #3 – Writing your own ‘is_page’ function similar to the one in WordPress
After building several WordPress sites lately, I've been getting used to writing it's common, but useful functions to do various different things. I've now come to write new sites that don't use WordPress and I miss those functions! So I've created my own version of the is_page function among others. View the is_page function in the WordPress Codex.
The is_page function is great for non WordPress sites that use lots of includes, such as menus. Say if you have two different includes that are included into different types of pages, you can put them in one include and use this conditional function to detect the page.
Defining the page
First I set the page name in a value called $page and echo it into the title of the document. It's not necessary to echo it but it makes sense to.
index.php
Writing the 'is_page' function
Now in my index.php file I'll include a functions.php file at the top of the page before the doctype.
Next place the is_page function into inc/functions.php. First we define the function name with a value called $current_page that we can set when writing the function. Then set the $page value to global so that it can be read from outside the function. All that's left is a simple if statement that checks whether our page name entered into the function's brackets matches our title we set at the top of our index.php page in $title. If $page and $current_page match, it will return true if not, it will return false.
inc/functions.php
Calling the 'is_page' function on our page
Back on the index.php add call the function and enter the matching page name.
Now a live demo wouldn't be much help unless you could see the un-generated code, so download the files and give it a blast. Let me know you thoughts/improvements or if you use it, below.
18 comments
Liam Goodacre wrote on
Cool, nice tip
used something similar to this awhile back, where I used a ‘select’ to determine which page content to include, in relation to what the current page title was.
–Liam Goodacre
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JD Hartley wrote on
Looks great!
You could even simplify the title tag
To this:
Thanks for the code, Benjamin.
-JD
Xs wrote on
function is_page($current_page, $page, $title){
if($current_page == $page)
echo $title;
}
This function could save you a bit more of time
Marc wrote on
Hey Benjamin, thanks for this helpful little post. It’s exactly what I was looking for. I do have a problem though and I was wandering if you’d help me solve it?
I pull my header[dot]php with the PHP function requier into all my pages. Now all of my pages are having the same name.
I’m not good enough to find a work around myself. Could you help me with a quick fix? Many thanks Marc
Nouveller wrote on
Instead of defining $page in the page title just add it above you’re header.php include, that should sort it out. If you’re still having problems, send me a message using my contact form.
Marc wrote on
Thanks Benjamin, I just moved the entire title tag including you PHP snippet from above onto my page befor my require (include) header. It works perfect!
Nouveller wrote on
Great! Glad you got it sorted.
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sameed wrote on
I need to have one css file for home page and another one for all other pages. It is simply PHP files not using any CMS.
Can you help me please
sameed wrote on
thanks a lot for your very useful code for the php novice like me…
It works as follow, if any one needed.
I called the following in my header.php
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Louie wrote on
Very useful thank you.
To save some lines, you could also replace the “if ($page == $current)” statement with a nice ternary operator:
return ($page == $current) ? true : false;