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It’s possible that you’re thinking, “Processing PHP in CSS? That’s plain stinks.,” just from reading the heading. It does stink, but so does maintaining two CSS files, updating your colour scheme manually (or even by sed), changing common dimensions, and all the other crap that goes with static files. Think about it this way – would you build a site out of many HTML files or would you use some kind of template system (like Pretty Smarties)? By now I hope you’re less sceptical. If you’re interested, please read on.

Executing PHP in CSS Files

In order to parse and execute PHP in a CSS file, all you have to do is tell Apache to treat CSS files as PHP, and just make sure you tell the browser that it’s NOT text/html (default mime type) but CSS.Very easy.

.htaccess File

Place a .htaccess file in the directory of the CSS file (if there isn’t one already). Simply add a directive to process the PHP in CSS files. Depending on your configuration, you might have to use a different directive. Here are the two most common ones I’ve been able to use:
Mod_PHP (Apache PHP Module)

#MOD PHP

	SetHandler application/x-httpd-php

Others:

#OTHERS
AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .css

(If you’re using php4, use x-httpd-php4)

CSS (and PHP) File

I recommend using this code just to test that your Apache directive is working. Hopefully this example shows the potential use for (server-side) executable code in CSS files.

<?php
	//make sure the browser treats this as CSS
	header("Content-Type: text/css");
 
	//browser detection
	if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],"Internet Explorer") > 0) {
		$internet_explorer = true;
	}
 
	$baseColour = "#F3AA9C";
	$secondaryColour = "#CCAF1F";
	$foregroundColour = "#FFFFFF";
	$moduleWidth = "125px";
?>
 
#content {
	background:<?php echo $baseColour; ?>;
	colour:<?php echo $foregroundColour ?>;
}
 
#sideBar {
	background: <?php echo $secondaryColour; ?>;
	color:<?php echo $baseColour; ?>;
	width:<?php echo $moduleWidth; ?>;
}
 
#footer {
	color: <?php echo $secondaryColour; ?>;
	background:<?php echo $foregroundColour; ?>;
}

Obviously mixing PHP and CSS stuffs up syntax highlighting sorry.

Caveat

Most browsers will download the CSS file on every pageload – it’s not too difficult to implement cache-control, but I haven’t done it for this code.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 6:49 pm and is filed under CSS, PHP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.