[RESOLVED] Smarter way of doing this?

[Skawn]

The code below is what I came up with to generate a side navigation bar for a website... it's my first attempt at writing anything from scratch and, while I'm please it works well, I'm curious as to whether theres a smarter way of achieving the same effect. Any thoughts?

<?
$items = "6";

$_1 = "Home";
$_2 = "About Us";
$_3 = "Forums";
$_4 = "Gallery";
$_5 = "Links";
$_6 = "temp1";
$_7 = "temp2";
$_8 = "temp3";
$_9 = "temp4";
$_10 = "temp5";

$last = "Join Us";
?>

<div id="sidenavbar">
<div class="sidenavarea">
<ul class="sidenav">

<? 
$item = "1";


while ($item < $items) 
{ 

if ($item == 1) {$link = "$_1";}
elseif ($item == 2) {$link = "$_2";}
elseif ($item == 3) {$link = "$_3";}
elseif ($item == 4) {$link = "$_4";}
elseif ($item == 5) {$link = "$_5";}
elseif ($item == 6) {$link = "$_6";}
elseif ($item == 7) {$link = "$_7";}
elseif ($item == 8) {$link = "$_8";}
elseif ($item == 9) {$link = "$_9";}
elseif ($item == 10) {$link = "$_10";}


?>
<li><a href="<? echo ($link) ?>.php " title=" <? echo ($link) ?> ">&nbsp; <? echo ($link) ?> </a></li>
<? 

$item++;

}
?>
<li class="last"><a href="<? echo ($last) ?>.php " title=" <? echo ($last) ?> ">&nbsp; <? echo ($last) ?> </a></li>

</ul>
</div>
</div>

[Installer]

You should read up on and use arrays. Cutting down on the echo statements and not escaping in and out of php constantly will give you cleaner (easier to maintain and read) code. Here's a start:

$item_arr = array('Home', 'About Us', 'Forums', 'Gallery', 'Links', 
                  'temp1', 'temp2', 'temp3', 'temp4', 'temp5', 'Join Us'); 

$html_string = '<div id="sidenavbar">' .
               '<div class="sidenavarea">' . 
               '<ul class="sidenav">';

foreach ($item_arr as $item) {
    $link = $item;
    $html_string .= '<li><a href="' . $link . '.php" title="' . 
                    $link . '">&nbsp;' . $link . '</a></li>';
}
$html_string .= '</ul></div></div>';

echo $html_string;

Also, never use short opening tags ("<?"). Use "<?php".

[Skawn]

Nice one... I had a feeling there'd be a neater way of doing it.

Shall go read up on arrays now 🙂

Also didn't know you could add to a variable like that - pretty handy, cheers.