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boloco
boloco
Known Participant
June 24, 2009
Answered

Convert all html files to php files

  • June 24, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 12756 views

Hi there,

I have hundreds of pages .html in my local folder and I want to convert them to .php.

Is there any way to do this in a single shot instead of going to replace every ".html" with ".php"

Help please.

Thanks!

boloco

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer David_Powers

Exactly!

DwFAQ, I would appreciate you provide me the regular expression so I can try it in the future after I test it.

Actually, I'm with David. I'm just doing it patiently one by one with a some breaks so I don't go too crazy.

Thank you both of you for your input.

This question is for David.

David, can I run without downside html files on a dynamic site?

Thanks!

boloco


Certainly, you can run html files on a dynamic site. There are two possible scenarios:

  • The server is configured to treat .html files as .php files.
  • The .html files don't contain any PHP code.

In the first scenario, the server automatically passes all files to the PHP engine. If you're on shared hosting, your hosting company is unlikely to agree to this, but you can certainly ask.

In the second scenario, you can convert your files to .php as and when you add PHP code to a file. The problem with this approach is that URLs bookmarked by others will break each time you change. When creating a PHP site, I always use .php file name extensions, even if the page isn't dynamic, because it allows me to add PHP code at any stage later on.

1 reply

DwFAQ
DwFAQ
Participating Frequently
June 24, 2009

mac or pc?

If Mac use Automator.app just drag the Get Specified Finder Items action into your workflow then click the add button and add the files you want to rename into the list. After that add a Rename Finder Items action and select replace text from the dropdown option list and for find enter .html and for replace enter .php

Run the workflow and you'll have all the selected file extensions that previously had .html extension now renamed to .php

David_Powers
David_Powers
Inspiring
June 24, 2009

www.DwFAQ.info wrote:

Run the workflow and you'll have all the selected file extensions that previously had .html extension now renamed to .php

I haven't tried that, but renaming the files outside Dreamweaver will result in all internal page links breaking. Unfortunately, Dreamweaver doesn't have a feature that batch processes file renaming.

David_Powers
David_Powers
Inspiring
June 26, 2009

I knew you'd say something like that because surely it would be too hard to find your_page.html, your_other_page.html, etc. and replace to your_page.php etc. to only change your page extensions from html to php and retain extension for other links. Or alternatively it would be too difficult to change extensions then go and patch outside links that may have been replaced. You can also use a regular expression to avoid replacing unwanted extensions. It's actually a lot easier than you would think. No you're right just go and manually change all the 100+ links yourself that's the fast, efficient way to do it I agree.

boloco,

To use find/replace in DW go to find/replace from the View menu (command F)


You can also use a regular expression to avoid replacing unwanted extensions. It's actually a lot easier than you would think.

If it's so easy, perhaps you would like to provide boloco with the appropriate regular expression to identify external links. It's not impossible, but it would need to be very thoroughly tested before running it through 300 pages. Just telling someone to run Find and Replace on a large number of pages without thinking through the possible consequences is not very helpful.

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