57

I want to include an HTML page inside an HTML page. Is it possible?

I don't want to do it in PHP, I know that in PHP, we can use include for this situation, how can I achieve the same purely in HTML without using the iframe and frame concept?

Paddy
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praveenjayapal
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14 Answers14

43

You can use an object element

<object type="text/html" data="urltofile.html"></object>

or, on your local server, AJAX can return a string of HTML (responseText) that you can use to document.write a new window, or edit out the head and body tags and add the rest to a div or another block element in the current page.

kennebec
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    Unfortunately using OBJECT or EMBED tags also introduces HEAD/BODY tags in the included HTML, even if you don't have them in the sub-HTML. This will break validation and also cause spacing issues so this is not the best solution. – gene b. Sep 28 '17 at 16:23
  • @geneb. Thanks. Exactly what I was wondering. I can't figure out why you'd ever want these extraneous tags introduced. You got any idea? – Tom Russell Jan 05 '19 at 21:46
33

If you're just trying to stick in your own HTML from another file, and you consider a Server Side Include to be "pure HTML" (because it kind of looks like an HTML comment and isn't using something "dirty" like PHP):

<!--#include virtual="/footer.html" -->
Daniel LeCheminant
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    This isnt a pure HTML solution is it? – Sam152 Mar 24 '09 at 07:15
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    Yeah +1. Its probably the better way of doing it. He also says that he doesn't want to use an iframe, so who knows which solution will work best. – Sam152 Mar 24 '09 at 07:24
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    Hey, here i got a idea, i have included the whole content inside the javascript - document.write. then place the javascript file inside the html. It working – praveenjayapal Mar 27 '09 at 06:15
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    If using Server Side Include (SSI) you need to be conscious that it may be difficult for your documents to be cached since the modified time and content length are all dynamic. With Apache you can use XBitHack Full (on UNIX) or mod_expires to set expiry times. I didn't end up using SSI for this reason. – steinybot Feb 10 '13 at 08:22
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    Just a remark. You need a server with SSI installed on the server for this to work, which is not always the case. – user334639 Sep 20 '13 at 12:36
  • I would `#include file` if it's in a higher directory in the site. – Cilan Feb 22 '14 at 22:27
28

If you mean client side then you will have to use JavaScript or frames.
Simple way to start, try jQuery

$("#links").load("/Main_Page #jq-p-Getting-Started li");

More at jQuery Docs

If you want to use IFrames then start with Wikipedia on IFrames

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
  <head>
        <title>Example</title>
  </head>
  <body>
        The material below comes from the website http://example.com/
        <iframe src="http://example.com/" height="200">
            Alternative text for browsers that do not understand IFrames.
        </iframe>
   </body>
</html>
Cherian
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  • Hey, here i got a idea, i have included the whole content inside the javascript - document.write. then place the javascript file inside the html. It working – praveenjayapal Mar 27 '09 at 06:18
23

You could use HTML5 for this:

<link rel="import" href="/path/to/file.html">

Update – July 2020: This feature is no longer supported by most major browsers, and generally considered obsolete. See caniuse for the list of browsers which do still support it.

Run_Script
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Muis
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    i like your solution. +1 – Mimouni Mar 15 '15 at 20:38
  • this is only for webcomponent polymer – Jose De Gouveia Apr 17 '15 at 11:23
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    @Joyal no, this is part of HTML5, some browsers are already support it, but for those that don't, you can use polymer to polyfill it. http://caniuse.com/#search=import – K. Norbert Aug 12 '15 at 08:49
  • @muis , the above code will only work if you load a page from the same domain, else you get the foloowing error : No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. This is restricted due to security reasons. For more details see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing – vanessen Sep 09 '15 at 11:04
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    This won't work on a lot of web browsers, if that is an issue for someone (like me): http://caniuse.com/#feat=imports – Jdban101 Jul 06 '16 at 17:29
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    This is a clean solution. Caveat: Browser support is dicey – Tarun Nov 16 '16 at 19:25
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    This is obsolete since Google Chrome 73. Try to avoid this solution. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components/HTML_Imports – notionquest Jan 08 '19 at 17:03
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    This is obsolete. This answer should be deleted or edited to have a disclaimer about it. – Stormblessed Feb 08 '20 at 00:40
12
<iframe src="page.html"></iframe>

You will need to add some styling to this iframe. You can specify width, height, and if you want it to look like a part of the original page include frameborder="0".

There is no other way to do it in pure HTML. This is what they were built for, it's like saying I want to fry an egg without an egg.

moffeltje
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Sam152
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5

If you're willing to use jquery, there is a handy jquery plugin called "inc".

I use it often for website prototyping, where I just want to present the client with static HTML with no backend layer that can be quickly created/edited/improved/re-presented

http://johannburkard.de/blog/programming/javascript/inc-a-super-tiny-client-side-include-javascript-jquery-plugin.html

For example, things like the menu and footer need to be shown on every page, but you dont want to end up with a copy-and-paste-athon

You can include a page fragment as follows

<p class="inc:footer.htm"></p>
ashario
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5
<html>
<head>
<title>example</title>
    <script> 
   $(function(){
       $('#filename').load("htmlfile.html");
   });
    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="filename">
    </div>
</body>
Narendrasingh Sisodia
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Niks
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4
$.get("file.html", function(data){
    $("#div").html(data);
});
Alvaro Sifuentes
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4

The best which i have got: Include in your js file and for including views you can add in this way

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
    <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
    <title>Bootstrap</title>
    <!-- Your custom styles (optional) -->
    <link href="css/style_different.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>

<body>
    <script src="https://www.w3schools.com/lib/w3data.js"></script>
    <div class="">
      <div w3-include-html="templates/header.html"></div>
      <div w3-include-html="templates/dashboard.html"></div>
      <div w3-include-html="templates/footer.html"></div>
    </div>
</body>
<script type="text/javascript">
    w3IncludeHTML();
</script>
</html>
Rahul
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1

You can say that it is with PHP, but actually it has just one PHP command, all other files are just *.html.

  1. You should have a file named .htaccess in your web server's /public_html directory, or in another directory, where your html file will be and you will process one command inside it.
  2. If you do not have it, (or it might be hidden (you should check this directory list by checking directory for hidden files)), you can create it with notepad, and just type one row in it:
    AddType application/x-httpd-php .html
  3. Save this file with the name .htaccess and upload it to the server's main directory.
  4. In your html file anywhere you want an external "meniu.html file to appear, add te command: <?php include("meniu.html"); ?>.

That's all!

Remark: all commands like <? ...> will be treated as php executables, so if your html have question marks, then you could have some problems.

Bo Persson
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Kestutis. Lithuania
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0

Also make sure to check out how to use Angular includes (using AngularJS). It's pretty straight forward…

<body ng-app="">
  <div ng-include="'myFile.htm'"></div>
</body>
cptstarling
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0

If you are using NGINX over linux and want a pure bash/html, you can add a mask on your template and pipe the requests to use the sed command to do a replace by using a regullar expression.

Anyway I would rather have a bash script that takes from a templates folder and generate the final HTML.

Aridane Álamo
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-1

Best solution from nginx: http://sysoev.ru/nginx/docs/http/ngx_http_ssi_module.html

satels
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-2

confirmed roadkill, create a .htaccess file in the web root with a single line which allows you to add php code to a .html file.

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html

ndmaque
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