Best Approach printing this?

arrangements

What is the best way to display this:

<?php if ($USER[loggedin] == true): ?>
Welcome to $SITE[sitename] $USERS[username], 
<?php endif; ?>

The arrays have values. My question is what is the best and easiest way to echo these arrays? Obviously you can place '<?php echo $SITE[sitename] ?>' but I want to know an alternative because I will be placing these arrays all over my site. It would be tedious work to place echoing and php syntax's everywhere.

NogDog

Any time you are going to be doing the same thing in many places, you should look at finding a way to put that thing into a user-defined function or a class method, which you could then call in any other script simply by including/requiring that definition file. It's a little hard for me to be very specific here as I don't know the context for how the $USER and $SITE arrays are created and populated and such.

NogDog

PS: For the basic situation you've provided, assuming it was a more-or-less one time thing, I'd probably do:

<?php
if($USER['loggedin'] == true)
{
   echo "Welcome to " . $SITE['sitename'] . ', ' . $USERS[username];
}
?>

arrangements

"I will be placing these arrays all over my site."

Na, this is going to be the foundation for all of my php pages. I used to use templates but the large mass of files made it difficult to manage.

arrangements

I found that this approach is the best solution but there is a problem with it:

	if ($USERCAN[viewuserlist] == 1)
	{
		$content = "<a href="$SITE[urlusers]/userlist.php">View Memberlist</a><br /><br /><br />
<b>User Links</b><br />
<a href="$SITE[urlusers]/logout.php">Logout</a><br />";
	}

As you can I have to add \" to every freaken quote!

bretticus

Since you are coming from a template approach, I'd assume you'd like to have a clean implementation that a designer would be able to understand (being one of the principle reasons for templates--besides the need to separate your presentation and business logic.) You can use a little type juggling to convert your arrays to objects. For example, the following code will return 1 (or true) :

$USERCAN = array(
	'viewuserlist'=>1,
	'drink_lemonade'=>0
);
$myusercan = (object) $USERCAN;
echo $myusercan->viewuserlist;

Now, if I'm a novice coder or designer, I would be able to understand code better like this:

<?php if ($myusercan->viewuserlist):?>
<a href=<?=$mysite->urlusers?>/userlist.php">View Memberlist</a><br /><br /><br />
<b>User Links</b><br />
<a href="<?=$mysite->urlusers?>/logout.php">Logout</a><br />
<?php endif; ?>

Now, I have heard ppl say crap like, "Real coders only need notepad for html." etc. I have been in this business long enough to state with total confidence, "Real designers, who are employed, who actually know how to do graphic design, who have real deadlines, and web pages that don't look like total crap, use wysiwyg editors." Be nice to them, they have work to do just like you. I used to put my entire page in the same php tags (php printed all the html!) when I was a novice php developer. When some trivial markup needs to be added to a webpage, guess who they come looking for...You! Producing a significant amount of html code in the buffer via PHP is minimal performance gain for maximum cost. Just doesn't make sense unless your a one-man shop!

bretticus

I suppose I should mention that short_open_tag is considered bad php coding practice because it resembles xml convention ( I actually have had this issue before.) However, the following is fairly readable too (though less brief.)

<?php if ($myusercan->viewuserlist):?> 
<a href=<?php echo $mysite->urlusers?>/userlist.php">View Memberlist</a><br /><br /><br /> 
<b>User Links</b><br /> 
<a href="<?php echo $mysite->urlusers?>/logout.php">Logout</a><br /> 
<?php endif; ?>