How to Use a PHP Link to HTML Page Class to Generate Links or Form Buttons to Link Pages to Other Sites Using the Package Link Generator: Generate HTML for links and forms from templates

Overview

StartDir\LinkGenerator is a template-driven URL and form generator.

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It allows you to:

Register URL templates per software and module

Generate links dynamically from placeholders

Automatically generate matching HTML forms

Validate that all placeholders are replaced

Separate URL structure from runtime values

The class is especially useful when generating search or action URLs for platforms such as Mastodon or Friendica, where URL patterns are predictable but instances differ.

Internal Architecture

Templates are stored as a two-dimensional array:

[
    'software' => [
        'module' => 'https://{instance}/path?q={q}'
    ]
]

Placeholders use {name} syntax.

Reserved placeholder:

{instance} → always replaced automatically

All other placeholders must be supplied via parameters (for links) or are converted into form fields (for forms).

Constructor

public function __construct(array $defaultTemplates = [])

Allows optional default templates to be injected during instantiation.

Example

$generator = new \StartDir\LinkGenerator([
    'mastodon' => [
        'search' => 'https://{instance}/search?q={query}'
    ]
]);


addTemplate()
public function addTemplate(
    string $software,
    string $module,
    string $template
): void

Registers or overwrites a template.

Software names are normalized to lowercase.

Modules are case-sensitive.

Templates may contain placeholders.

Example

$generator->addTemplate(
    'friendica',
    'search',
    'https://{instance}/search?q={q}'
);

Example

$generator = new \StartDir\LinkGenerator();
$generator->addDefaults();

if ($generator->templateExists('mastodon', 'search')) {

    echo $generator->generateLink(
        'mastodon.social',
        'mastodon',
        'search',
        ['q' => 'open source'],
    );

    echo $generator->getFormHtml(
        'mastodon.social',
        'mastodon',
        'search',
        'GET',
        [
              //   'q' => ''
        ],
	[
		'target'=>'_blank',		 
	],
    );
}