PHP or HTML

BruceBID

Hey all 🙂

I would have searched the forum but I don't really know the term to search for.

I have just started learning php. I tried learning mysql alongside it but php is hard enough for the moment so I am going back to basics. (I'm a designer trying to learn to be a developer haha)

I have noticed a couple of ways people seem to layout their code.

Some people seem to use HTML with PHP code inserted like so: (from the php manual)

<html>
<head>
<title>PHP Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php echo '<p>Hello World</p>'; ?>
</body>
</html>

Other people seem to use php to create the HTML like so :

echo("<tr><td>$tablerows[1]</td><td>$tablerows[2]</td><td>$tablerows[3]</td><td>$tablerows[4]</td><td>$tablerows[5]</td><td>$tablerows[6]</td><td>$tablerows[7]</td></td></tr>");
}

My question is, is there a prefered method? or modern method? or is it purely personal choice. This may seem like lame question lol but I don't want to start developing bad habits right at the start. I hope I have explained clearly enough what I asking.

Please let me know your thoughts 🙂

Thanks a bunch
Bruce

Shrike

It's down to personal choice, there are good arguments for and against both 😉

BruceBID

I thought that might be the case hehe. i guess also different scenarios and applications would call for the use of both at times.

Thanks Shrike!

suepahfly

I personally don't like either of the two.
I preffer template engines. 🙂

Shrike

Why? 🙂

Cailean

I've started echoing all of my HTML... It is especially useful when you start moving things around on your page and lose track of the php start and end tags...

Roger_Ramjet

If you want to develop 'good' habits then well-structured and well-commented code is your goal. This is much easier to do when writting it as PHP that generates the HTML.

onion2k

Apparently, though I've not tested it, switching between HTML and PHP alot in a script slows it down..

Roger_Ramjet

Don't listen to stuff like that, just someone who does not really know how operating systems and software work. Processing speed is dependent on so many factors, the number of transitions between html/php not being one of them. Database access can slow you down enormousely, so running efficient queries is important. The number of loops, and how many passes through each, will also affect speed. Most important will be the server you are hosted on, not only the hardware but also how many other site you share it with and how much traffic each one has is probably the single most influential factor in the speed of your pages and site.

As a general rule, php pages run faster than any other type of dynamic pages such as dhtml, asp, etc. That is really all you need to know. If you site is too slow, change host is the first fix, it will be slow no matter what scripting language you use.

Shrike

Surely you test all of your work on a local machine so that you know network traffic is not the issue?

onion2k

Originally posted by Roger Ramjet
Don't listen to stuff like that, just someone who does not really know how operating systems and software work. Processing speed is dependent on so many factors, the number of transitions between html/php not being one of them. Database access can slow you down enormousely, so running efficient queries is important. The number of loops, and how many passes through each, will also affect speed. Most important will be the server you are hosted on, not only the hardware but also how many other site you share it with and how much traffic each one has is probably the single most influential factor in the speed of your pages and site.

As a general rule, php pages run faster than any other type of dynamic pages such as dhtml, asp, etc. That is really all you need to know. If you site is too slow, change host is the first fix, it will be slow no matter what scripting language you use.

Is this post a joke?

Roger_Ramjet

What for? The environments are so different that performance on one has no bearing on the performance on t'other.

It's not network traffic and bandwidth rationing that is the issue: it is the server itself that matters most. Hardware platform, operating system, web server software, and the configuration of all 3, are the primary factors in site performance. How many sites you share the server with, and how busy they are, will have far more impact on your site's performance than almost anything else.

So a local test is meaningless for assessing final performance.

Local testing for database shema and query optimisation are, of course, of value. You can benchmark different designs and processing locally. Just don't expevt the results to replicate on a shared server.

Roger_Ramjet

Originally posted by onion2k
Is this post a joke?

No.

onion2k

You really don't have a clue, do you?

Roger_Ramjet

About what? Hardware? Operating systems?

onion2k

Originally posted by Roger Ramjet
About what? Hardware? Operating systems?

Web development.

Suggesting that switching between PHP and HTML a lot in a script couldn't affect the time it takes to run.. thats stupid.

And trying to tell me "Don't listen to stuff like that, just someone who does not really know how operating systems and software work." with reference to that, is, quite frankly, insulting.

:rolleyes:

Shrike

Originally posted by Roger Ramjet
What for? The environments are so different that performance on one has no bearing on the performance on t'other.

It's not network traffic and bandwidth rationing that is the issue: it is the server itself that matters most. Hardware platform, operating system, web server software, and the configuration of all 3, are the primary factors in site performance. How many sites you share the server with, and how busy they are, will have far more impact on your site's performance than almost anything else.

So a local test is meaningless for assessing final performance.

Local testing for database shema and query optimisation are, of course, of value. You can benchmark different designs and processing locally. Just don't expevt the results to replicate on a shared server.

That maybe so, but if you release inefficient code to a badly performing web server then things will seem even worse. It's certainly not my job to consider network performance when I'm writing code, that's the job of the server administrator. A PHP script will be served equally as bad as a GIF image, it has no bearing on how well PHP performs as a language.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Roger Ramjet
As a general rule, php pages run faster than any other type of dynamic pages such as dhtml, asp, etc.

Hmmm... DHTML.... that runs client-side (being Javascript) so doesn't suffer network lag. Of course, if it needs to call on server resources, it has to request them and that's a delay, but then there's also the issue of what the server is running....um, how did that get in the list again?

Oh, and it also assumes that the PHP programmer is reasonably competent.

In the original poster's two snippets - although it is hard to compare them since they're doing different things - the latter I have found to be approximately twice as slow as straightforwad equivalents (concatentation, comma-separated arguments, or escaping from PHP), but (a) the relative timings seem to change from PHP version to PHP version as the internals are dickered around with and I really can't be bothered rewriting everything for every new version that's installed, and (b) the saving is only on the order of milliseconds per day and I've got far more important things to do than waste seconds of my time on eliminating milliseconds of server time: my time is more expensive for a start, and no-one is going to notice those milliseconds. Oh, and (c), optimisers can really change things.

This is an optimisation issue that's so far below the noise threshold it's not worth worrying about. The effort is better spent making the code as a whole sleek and simple. Remember that source code is intended to be readable and writable by humans. So use whichever is the most natural in whatever the current context is.