Parsing variables within DB?

[thetakerfan]

lets say I have two tables in my DB, settings, and main.
in the settings table, it has some settings, duh, like bgcolor1, bgcolor2, etc.
now, in main, I put certain things that I want output onto my site, like the main nav table that goes on the left. in that table, I want to use some of the settings, like bgcolor1.
how do I get the output file to parse the contents of the main DB so that it uses the value of bgcolor1, instead of printing "bgcolor1"?

[TWTCommish]

I think you'll want to have all variables set (for example, a query to make sure all variables, IE "bgcolor", or whatever you might be using, are available to the script). After that, you should be able to use PHP's eval() function to parse the variables inside the templates. Check it out.

http://www.php.net/eval

Good luck.

[thetakerfan]

thanks for the quick reply, checking it out now

[thetakerfan]

thanks dude, works like a charm

[thetakerfan]

ok, maybe not like a charm, exactly
what do you mean by

I think you'll want to have all variables set (for example, a query to make sure all variables, IE "bgcolor", or whatever you might be using, are available to the script).

?

[thetakerfan]

ok, I have this:

$settings = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tq_settings") or die ("Error:".mysql_error());
$settings_row = mysql_fetch_array($settings); 

ok, I think I know what I'm gonna do now

[TWTCommish]

$settings = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tq_settings") or die ("Error:".mysql_error());
$settings_row = mysql_fetch_array($settings);

Hmm...I don't understand. What's that table look like? You see, you'll need to use a function, like extract() to automatically create all the necessary variables.

[thetakerfan]

oh, I see, I'll look into it tonight, thanks
I was just making $settings_row global and using it like that, $settings_row["bgcolor1"], but I was gonna do it another way anyway, but this looks better

[thetakerfan]

ok, so far it works fine, but now I'm trying to create an edit page. what I want is to put the contents of the "contents" field into a textarea so it can be edited. here is the code I have

$contents = stripslashes($blocks_row["contents"]); 

and then later

<textarea cols="80" rows="20" name="contents" value="<?php echo $contents; ?>"></textarea>

here is what is in the table

<tr bgcolor=\"$bgcolor3\"><td nowrap>test</td></tr> 

but this is what gets outputted

<TEXTAREA cols=80 name=contents rows=20 $bgcolor3? value="<tr bgcolor=">&lt;td nowrap&gt;test&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;"&gt;</TEXTAREA> 

[thetakerfan]

nevermind, stupid mistake