Printing HTML with PHP...

techguy

Hi,

I'm just wondering whats the best way of printing HTML when it has to be passed through PHP?

At the moment i'm just using echo with single quotes and letting inserting breaks in the editor to make it more readible.

When I view the source from a browser the HTML looks weird.

Also, when doing this you don't get to see anything in design view or get code suggestions in Dreamweaver..

Here's a quick snippet of my work..

extract($row);
echo '<td>';
echo 	'<img src="images/album_image.gif" class="album_thumbnail"/>';
echo '</td> ';
echo '<td>';
echo 	'Name: '. $name .'<br />';
echo 	'Description: <br />'. $description .'<br />';
echo 	'<a href="view_album.php?albumId='. $album_id .'">View</a>';
echo '</td>';

How would you guys go about printing this?

In some pages I am doing two things e.g. add a photo form and then on the same page I display a confirmation message with no from.. This means I can't just use straight html and then open up a <?php tag when I need to insert dynamic data.. or does it?

Thanks..

DonkeyStyle \o/

Just do one big multi-line echo and create line breaks in the resulting html source with "\r\n"

So you could have...

[php]
<?php
$nl = "\r\n";

echo 'some text here
is '.$value.' and some other
stuff'.$nl;
?>
[/php]

or you could write it like
[php]
some text here is <?php echo $value ?> and some other stuff
[/php]

Or look up heredoc syntax or use include or require if you've got tons of html.

The way you're doing it is alright though, you could fix the output html by doing:
[php]
$nl = "\r\n";
echo '<td>'.$nl;
echo '<img src="images/album_image.gif" class="album_thumbnail"/>'.$nl;
echo '</td> '.$nl;
echo '<td>'.$nl;
echo 'Name: '. $name .'<br />'.$nl;
echo 'Description: <br />'. $description .'<br />'.$nl;
echo '<a href="view_album.php?albumId='. $album_id .'">View</a>'.$nl;
echo '</td>'.$nl;
[/php]
Or if you want to go nuts on formatting you could add tabs with '\t'

techguy

Cool, at least I wasn't too far off!

Whats the deal with the "print <<<" statement, I saw it somwhere one but can't find it anymore?

IIRC it prints text from multiple lines..??

DonkeyStyle \o/

Check this out... link
Although I don't find myself using it much anymore for some reason.
Between multi-line echo statements and concatenating lines...

You could also try building your output inside a single variable...

$mystring = 'line 1';
$mystring .= 'line 2';
$mystring .= 'line 3';
$mystring .= 'line 4';

Then it's handy enough to output where ever you need it, without creating a big mess.
echo $mystring;

Placebo

depending on your code, you could have an If else statement and close off php tags
[php]
<?php
if(whatever)
{


?>

<!-- HTML CODE -->

<?php

}

else{}

?>[/php]

marcphisto

techguy wrote: »

Cool, at least I wasn't too far off!

Whats the deal with the "print <<<" statement, I saw it somwhere one but can't find it anymore?

IIRC it prints text from multiple lines..??

This is basically how the <<< works

[PHP]
$output =<<< eod
<td>
<img src="images/album_image.gif" class="album_thumbnail"/>
</td>
<td>
Name: $name <br />
Description: <br /> $description <br />
<a href="view_album.php?albumID=$album_id">View</a>
</td>
eod;

echo $output
[/PHP]

You can also run this through a while loop to spit out rows of data

eg

[PHP]
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($res)) {
$output .=<<< eod
your output
eod;
}
[/PHP]

The closing eod; must be flush to the left hand side of your editor and must not contain any white space after the ; other wise you'll get errors

p

Why not simply do this? Should solve most of your needs. This is what any PHP dev I've ever worked with did.
[HTML]
<td>
<img src="images/album_image.gif" class="album_thumbnail"/>
</td>
<td>
Name: <?=$name?> <br />
Description: <br /> <?=$description?> <br />
<a href="view_album.php?albumID=<?=$album_id?>">View</a>
</td>[/HTML]

If you need to do any more advanced PHP processing do it via an include or at the top of the document as suggested. Doing it that way makes it really easy to work with HTML templates produced by others, and also for them to change them if necessary.

FruitLover

Printing HTML via PHP is silly for many reasons; you should follow p's advice above.

ronkmonster

p wrote: »

Why not simply do this? Should solve most of your needs. This is what any PHP dev I've ever worked with did.
[html]
<td>
<img src="images/album_image.gif" class="album_thumbnail"/>
</td>
<td>
Name: <?=$name?> <br />
Description: <br /> <?=$description?> <br />
<a href="view_album.php?albumID=<?=$album_id?>">View</a>
</td>[/html]If you need to do any more advanced PHP processing do it via an include or at the top of the document as suggested. Doing it that way makes it really easy to work with HTML templates produced by others, and also for them to change them if necessary.

That requires asp tags turned on at the server.
I'm not sure if its common to have turned on.

But it is the tidiest way of inserting dynamic values.

Goodshape

ronkmonster wrote: »

That requires asp tags turned on at the server.

Short tags, you mean?

If they aren't turned on, or just if you want to take the safest approach ::

<?=$value;?>

is the same as

<?php echo $value; ?>


The longer one will work regardless.

techguy

Some good tips here..

I think i'll probably go with normal html then open php tags whereever I need dynamic data.. this is probably best as I am doing all the php and a friend is doing all the html on a project atm..

Eoin

I think that's the best idea. I don't know PHP, but did a lot of ASP coding a while ago, and where ever possible I separated the code from the markup, using variables or if statements, rather than spitting out lots of HTML on the fly.

Liam Byrne

If you've a LOT of HTML, then put the HTML into a template file and use str_replace or sprintf to replace placeholders.

elyod

techguy wrote: »

Hi,
Also, when doing this you don't get to see anything in design view or get code suggestions in Dreamweaver..

If you want Dreamweaver to have access to specific chunks of code which will only show in certain situations you could do something like below.

Using the structure of a function to hide chunks of code, yet editors like Dreamweaver and Expression web will "see" them and allow you to edit them in design mode.

[php]
<div id='content'>
<?php
$input = 1;
if($input == 1)
{
one();
}
elseif($input == 2)
{
two("argument");
}
else
{
three();
}
?>
</div>

<?php
//Functions
function one()
{
?>
<p>Contents of function one</p>
<?php
} //end one()
function two($arg)
{
?>
<p>Contents of function two, with an <?php echo $arg ?></p>
<?php
} //end two()
function three()
{
?>
<p>Contents of function three </p>
<?php
} //end three()
?>
[/php]