concatenating strings

skdzines

I have a function that I want to use to form a series of strings that I can then display in an email.

The following is part of the function that I want to be able to store as strings within a variable:

$string1="
		<table width='750' border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0'>
		<form action='/project/checkout.php' method='post'>
	  <tr> 
		<td width='368'><p><font size='1' face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif'><b>Product Name</b></font></p>
		<p>&nbsp;</p></td>
		<td width='138'><p><font size='1' face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif'><b>Price</b></font></p>
		<p>&nbsp;</p></td>
		<td width='194'><p><font size='1' face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif'><b>Qty</b></font></p>
		<p>&nbsp;</p></td>
		<td width='50'><p><font size='1' face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif'><b>Total</b></font></p>
		<p>&nbsp;</p></td>
	  </tr>
	";

//display each item as a table row
	foreach($cart as $prod['productID'] => $qty){
	$prodInfo = mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query("select productPrice, productName from products where productID = ".$prod['productID'].""));
	$string2="
	<tr>
		<td><font size='1' face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif'>".$prodInfo['productName']."</font></td>
		<td><font size='1' face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif'>\$".number_format($prodInfo['productPrice'], 2)."</font></td>
		<td>";

I then want to put the two strings together something like this:
$string = $string1 && $string2;

I then want to call that function and place it in an email to have it display the contents of my shopping cart.

I'm pretty sure this isn't correct because it doesn't work.

First off I'm not real sure as to how to store the code into a string and then how to concatenate all of the strings into one string that can be returned by the function.

Can somebody please help me? I really hope someone can help me tonight so I can get this thing completed before class tomorrow morning.

sid

hmmm... well - its late and i have a hard time thinking straight right now... maybe thisll help after all:

concatenate strings like this:

$string = $string1 . $string2;

not like that: $string = $string1 && $string2;

skdzines

okay, I'm startng to get it to work but this is what is printing in the email:

<table width='630' border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0'>
<form action='/project/checkout.php' method='post'>
<tr>
<td width='368'>Product Name
 </td>
<td width='138'>Price
 </td>
<td width='74'>Qty
 </td>
<td width='50'>Total
 </td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>A CHRISTMAS CAROL BOOK</td>
<td>$4.50</td>
<td> 1
<td>$4.50</td>
</tr>

I don't want it to be in html. I tried getting rid of all of the html tags and just use the values I'm looking for and tried to lay it out the way I would want it to look in the email but then it just did this:

Product Name Price Qty TotalBOYS AND GIRLS CHRISTMAS NATIVITY SET $14.501$14.50________________________________________________________________ 2 $19.00

It puts everything together instead of seperate lines. It totally ignores the spaces.

How can I fix this?

Thanks for your help.

Weedpacket

Lines in emails end with \r\n, so make sure yours do too.

If you want things to line up in columns, you might want to have a play around with [man]sprintf[/man]. For example (this is just an example less trivial than those in the manual, to give you a better idea of what I'm getting at):

$items=array( array('name'=>'Foo Thing', 'price'=>23.5),
array('name'=>'Wibble', 'price'=>2.25),
array('name'=>'Left-handed widget', 'price'=>112.25));

$body='';
foreach($items as $item)
$body .= sprintf("%-30s: %4.2f\r\n", $item['name'], $item['price']);

echo $body; // And view HTML source.