PHP include file based on screen size

Question

        <?php

        include 'components/server.php';

Is it possible to make it include server.php for desktops and server-mobile.php for mobile devices?

Answer 1

While technically possible, it's absolutely not the best way of doing things.

Why?

Because PHP runs on the server and only the output of that PHP execution is given to the browser. You would probably be wanting something using javascript which can load and then seamlessly react to the browser conditions, such as screen size and/or dimensions.

If you're trying to change which PHP script is running based on the browser criteria (as mentioned above) this sounds very much like your programming logistics are simply wrong.

If you somehow really do need to change PHP script execution based on end-client (browser) characteristics you could do this by calling a script based on javascript AJAX or using mechanisms mentioned in comments above, but as said, you're almost certainly "doing it wrong".

Alternative

It would be far better to load everything you need in PHP and then pass all of that content to the browser (as output; HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.) for the Javascript in the browser to then decide which parts of the data it needs to use and ignoring the others.