NYCPHP Meetup

[David A. Roth]

I am converting an HTML based web site to Joomla 1.5RC1. In the body  
of the HTML, it has about 10 lines of PHP code which grabs a number  
from another web site so it can display this number in the middle of  
a sentence. Something like, "...with the current member now at 810  
members...". The number 810 is grabbed from an external web site  
which gets updated when the number of members increases or decreases.

OK, I thought about how this might be done. One was to write a Joomla  
Module to do the PHP, but didn't want to deal with the formatting of  
the rest of the article to make it look like a natural one that  
Joomla does so well.

The other idea, is that I went to Edit the article and select for it  
to display HTML. I then inserted the PHP code such as:
<?PHP

php code goes here
?>

I saved that and proceeded to reload the page in Joomla and no output  
was generated from the PHP code. I returned to the article, had it  
display HTML once again, and my PHP I included was gone.
Now I never did this before in Joomla 1.x, so I don't know if insert  
PHP is supported in this manner or not.

Q: Can PHP be embedded into the body of text in Joomla as I described  
above to carry out its task?

Q: Should I be forced to write a module and include the whole article  
inside the module just to do the PHP?

Q: Is there a more clever Joomla-like way to accomplish this in the  
manner similar to how mosimage (jpgs) are inserted into the body of  
text, but executed a PHP script?

Q: And what of Timmy, trapped in the well with Lassie distracted by a  
ripped box of vanilla flavored Frosty Paws®  that fell off the truck?  
When will help ever arrive? :-)

Thanks in advance,

David Roth
rothmail at comcast.net