title: How to place output from an external php file to a specific place on the page
body: <p>I have looked at other posts here regarding similar questions but cannot find an answer.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit</strong> I have been playing with this and I want to alter my question somewhat.</p>
  
  <p>I am having a problem placing the output that is echoed from an external php file.</p>
  
  <p>Here is some example code to demonstrate my problem - this is my main file <code>writephp.php</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
  &lt;html lang="en"&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;meta charset="utf-8"&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;Test Php &lt;/title&gt;
      &lt;link rel="stylesheet" href="writephp.css"&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
      &lt;div class="allContent"&gt;    
          &lt;?php for($i=0; $i&lt;3; $i++): ?&gt;
              &lt;div class="commentBox"&gt;
                 &lt;p&gt; Just a box&lt;/p&gt;
              &lt;/div&gt;  
          &lt;?php endfor; ?&gt;
          &lt;a href="write.php?outputHtml"&gt;Php output&lt;/a&gt;       
      &lt;/div&gt;  
  &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now I can center this with css:</p>
  
  <pre><code>.allContent {
  width: 400px;
  margin-left: auto;
  margin-right: auto;
  font-family: Arial;
  }
  .commentBox {
  border: 1px solid black;
  width: 400px;
  padding: 0px 5px 5px 5px;
  margin-top: 5px;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So in the html file the php writes out boxes which are centered in the page since the php loop is within the "allConent" div.</p>
  
  <p>The anchor envokes an external php file which will echo some more boxes.</p>
  
  <p>That file looks like this and is called <code>write.php</code> (<code>writephp.php</code> is the main file this is called from):</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  if (isset($_GET['outputHtml']))
  {
   echo "&lt;p  class='allContent commentBox'&gt;" . "This is from external PHP" . "&lt;/p&gt;";
   echo "&lt;p  class='allContent commentBox'&gt;" . "This is also from external PHP" . "&lt;/p&gt;";
   include 'writephp.php';
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/NOw7d.gif" alt="output looks like"></p>
  
  <p>But the echoed output from the external php is above the output from the main file  -in fact it is placed before the <code>&lt;!doctype html&gt;</code> tag , obviously not good.</p>
  
  <p>the page source looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;p  class='commentBox allContent'&gt;This is from external PHP&lt;/p
  &gt;&lt;p class='allContent commentBox'&gt;This is also from  external PHP&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
      &lt;html lang="en"&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;meta charset="utf-8"&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;Test Php &lt;/title&gt;
      &lt;link rel="stylesheet" href="writephp.css"&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
      &lt;div class="allContent"&gt;    
                          &lt;div class="commentBox"&gt;
                 &lt;p&gt; Just a box&lt;/p&gt;
              &lt;/div&gt;  
                          &lt;div class="commentBox"&gt;
                 &lt;p&gt; Just a box&lt;/p&gt;
              &lt;/div&gt;  
                          &lt;div class="commentBox"&gt;
                 &lt;p&gt; Just a box&lt;/p&gt;
              &lt;/div&gt;  
          &lt;a href="write.php?outputHtml"&gt;Php output&lt;/a&gt;       
      &lt;/div&gt;  
  &lt;/body&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p></p>
  
  <p>In general my question would be "<strong>how do I place html coming from an external php file anywhere I want on the page?</strong> "</p>