coding best practise

sevenfive

i have run into this issue a few times.

i need to store large chunks of html code inside php variables so i can create dynamic menus based on a users selections.

i have been doing this kinda thing

$thenav = "<li>\t\n<a href=\"blah.php\"><p>a load of html stuff in here</p></a>\n</li>\n";

which works fine but its a pain in the butt to create and update. im self taught so im not sure of the best practice for this kind of thing?

any thoughts would be useful...

rheinen

sevenfive wrote:
i need to store large chunks of html code inside php variables so i can create dynamic menus based on a users selections.

i have been doing this kinda thing
$thenav = "<li>\t\n<a href=\"blah.php\"><p>a load of html stuff in here</p></a>\n</li>\n";
which works fine but its a pain in the butt to create and update. im self taught so im not sure of the best practice for this kind of thing?

One of the simplest ways to organize it a little better would be to use the heredoc syntax. A heredoc is basically just a string but it removes the necessity of escaping quotes and variables, etc.

$thenav = <<<NAV
<li>
  <a href="blah.php">
    <p>a load of html stuff in here</p>
  </a>
</li>
NAV;

You could also just use a regular double quoted string but then you have to worry about escaping all of the double quotes you'll find in HTML attributes, etc.

$thenav = "
<li>
  <a href=\"blah.php\">
    <p>a load of html stuff in here</p>
  </a>
</li>";

Hope this helps,

Ryan

sevenfive

thanks! thats exactly what i needed - i remember using this in Perl so good to hear php has the same function!