Simple things........<br> and \n etc

Rodders

Hi y'all

I've got a PHP function which selects some data from MySQL and then outputs to HTML. Here's what comes out of it currently......

<div class="hot"><span class="yellow_text">23.07.05 NEWS</span><br>New website launch in 2 weeks<a href="#"><br>[more...]</a></div><div class="hot"><span class="yellow_text">20.07.05 FORUM</span><br>Defensive Driving<a href="#"><br>[more...]</a></div>

What I'd like to come out is this:

<div class="hot">
<span class="yellow_text">23.07.05 NEWS</span>
<br>New website launch in 2 weeks<a href="#">
<br>[more...]</a></div>

<div class="hot">
<span class="yellow_text">20.07.05 FORUM</span>
<br>Defensive Driving<a href="#">
<br>[more...]</a>
</div>

my PHP function looks something like this......

while ($hot_data = mysql_fetch_assoc($query)) {
 $hot_topics .= '<div class="hot">';
 $hot_topics .= '<span class="yellow_text">' . $hot_data['HOT_DATE'];
 $hot_topics .= ' ' . $hot_data['SECTION'] . '</span>';
 $hot_topics .= '<br>' . $hot_data['TEXT'] . '';
 $hot_topics .= '<a href="' . $hot_data['URI'] . '"><br>[more...]</a>';
 $hot_topics .= '</div>';
}
return $hot_topics;

How can I get it to format the HTML neatly, not that it really matters but I'm fussy like this!?

leatherback

add \r\n
at the end of each line,

Or use one set of qoutes for all lines

Rodders

Great! I had tried \n already but they kept appearing literally in the HTML rather than forcing a new line.

It seems that they have to be inside double quotes instead of single quotes !?

I have single quotes because some of the HTML contains double quotes........so confusing.

But Thank you for a prompt and accurate response.

leatherback

hm.. Now you say something.
I must admit: I only use it when formatting emails in ascii out, where I indeed use double quotes..

I use:
double quotes around long output strings
single quotes in arrays, querystrings

phphp

in double quotes "\r\n" means new line;

in single quotes '\r\n' means chars '\r\n';

define('NL', ( PHP_OS=='WINNT' ) ? "\r\n" : "\n"); //New Line Or Next Line
then you can use NL anywhere,

Rodders

phphp

That "define" looks very useful and interesting. What does the PHP_OS=='WINNT' portion do?

EDIT:
In fact, what does the whole thing do?

Weedpacket

It defines _NL to be \r\n or \n depending on whether or not the inbuilt constant PHP_OS is equal to WINNT or not.

Rodders

So, is it saying for WINNT return "\r\n" and for anything else just return "\n" ?

I've never used "ternary conditional operators" before - too scary! Didn't really have much use for them (I thought) but it looks like I can neaten up lots of if-else-if code chunks.

Thanks all for your input