在浏览页面时突出显示列表元素

Question

I saw a few tutorial about this problem but none of them satisfied me. I want to highlight the single element of my list which matches the page that I'm browsing. I created the code with php, is a wordpress based website, and the code actually works because when I echo the uri which I'm on it will display the right uri, but the if statement I created to add a class when I'm on the website won't output anything.. and I don't understand why.. anyway.. here's the code:

header.php

<ul class="nav nav-pills sliding" id="Jcollapse">
              <li class="<?php if ($current == "/why-chickapea/"){ echo "current";}?>"><a href="/why-chickapea/"><span>Why Chickapea?</span></a></li>
              <li class="<?php if ($current == "/our-pasta/"){ echo "current";}?>"><a href="/our-story/"><span>Our story</span></a></li>
              <li class="<?php if ($current == "/shop-chickapea/"){ echo "current";}?>"><a href="/shop-chickapea/"><span>Shop</span></a></li>
              <li class="<?php if ($current == "/recipes/"){ echo "current";}?>"><a href="/recipes/"><span>Recipes</span></a></li>
              <li class="<?php if ($current == "/blog/"){ echo "current";}?>"><a href="/blog/"><span>Blog</span></a></li>
            </ul>

In each page I added a php snippet:

<?php $current = $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]; ?>

If I echo the var $current I will obtain the right url in this format: /pagename/

At the end I style the class current with a yellow color

.current {
color:yellow;
}
.current a {
color:yellow;
}

Does anyone know where my mistake is?

this is the page website: choosechickapea.com

As you can see the class that my code will generate is empty, but if I echo each value the uri I will obtain is the right one

Answer 1

The simplest explanation would be, that you print the header before $current is set.

The second simplest explanation is different scopes, meaning either you set $current in a non-global scope or you read it in a non-global scope, and those two (whatever they are) are different. Since someone said wordpress, I guess there is some encapsulation into functions (thus changing the scope). Using the global keyword may be a solution, but a dirty one. But since you're already avoiding wordpress functions ...