What's the proper way of adding anchor links inside a php array?

Question

I changed the single quotes to doubles quotes after I faced th following problem:

 $lang = array(
        'let's do something...'
    );

Now I have this problem:

$lang = array(
    "tagline_h2" => "A paragraph...<a href="#">this is a link</a>"
);

What should I do?

Answer 1

As you are having double-quotes in a double-quoted string, you have to escape the double-quotes inside the string, using a backslash :

"A paragraph...<a href=\"#\">this is a link</a>"

See Double quoted string in the manual : it states that PHP will interpret the \" sequence as a double-quote (and \n will interpreted as a newline, and there are a couple of other of those sequences)

Answer 2

I like to use urlencode() and urldecode() to store strings temporarily. That way I don't have to think about double-quotes, quotes, ampersands, newlines or tabs or in fact anything.

Two caveats:

• The academics will point out that it performs worse, and I would respond by saying that more time is wasted thinking about it than dealing with it, since it's a PHP website and not a particle accelerator. (Or is it?)

• You have to urldecode() it when you're going to show it.

PLEASE NOTE that for the problem you describe, urlencode()/urldecode() would be overkill. I only mentioned this for future reference, but in your particular case, the escaping is far more appropriate as described in the accepted solution.

Answer 3

Even better, if you know that you are going to be dealing with quotes, why not use the heredoc and nowdoc syntaxes?

That way, you can do:

$lang = array(
    "tagline_h2" => <<<LINK A paragraph...<a href="#">this is a link</a>
LINK
);