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Question

Alternative to storing html in php strings

Answer 1

A:

Why not throw the php inline? Can you tell us why you need to store it before outputting?

for(...)
{
    ?><a id="<?php echo $i; ?>">link <?php echo $i; ?></a><?php
}

You really shouldn't use short tags.

Josh K 2010-08-09 04:19:05

Answer 2

+1 A:

Use a templating engine such as Smarty TPL. This is what they are.

They both separate the HTML display from the logic and provide convenience functions to generate tedious things like HTML radio buttons.

Borealid 2010-08-09 04:19:34

Answer 3

+1 A:

I believe the second method actually works as long as your included file ends with a return statement. However, why not a template engine such as Smarty?

In Smarty (and I'm sure there are others there are still loops but they are geared toward markup. Also the results of the template aren't output until you call the display() method. This allows you to assign whatever variables you need. Your example would go something like:

PHP:

$links = array('http://stackoverflow.com/','http://google.com'); // whatever you're looping over.
$smarty->assign('links', $links);
// ... other processing ... etc.
$smarty->display('path/to/template.tpl');

Template:

<html>
<body>
{foreach from=$links item=$link }
<a href="{$link}">link {$link}</a>
{/foreach}
</body>
</html>

Cfreak 2010-08-09 04:24:42

Answer 4

+1 A:

You could do:

ob_start();
include 'yourfile.php';
$markup = ob_get_contents();

Check out other functions for output buffering: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.outcontrol.php.

jcmoney 2010-08-09 04:57:07

Answer 5

A:

Building on @jcmonkey's suggestion, you could write a function like so:

function markup($i) {
    ob_start();
    include 'markup.php';
    return ob_get_contents();
}

... with a file markup.php which would look like this:

<?php /* I don't like using short_open_tag */ ?>
<a id="<?php echo $i; ?>">link<?php echo $i; ?></a>

You can then call markup() in your for-loop:

for(...)
{
    $markup .= markup($i);
}

LeguRi 2010-08-09 05:08:22

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Alternative to storing html in php strings

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