Repeated HTML in wordpress functions.php - php

Question

I am creating a few shortcodes In the functions.php file for our wordpress site and am working on how best to implement it.
A selection list of 240 countries that can be chosen from will be in a few different shortcodes and instead of placing the entire list 4 or 5 times I was wondering if we could implement it one time and make the call from within the function.
This is what we have right now:
function form_function() {
ob_start();
?>
...
<select id="fc" name="fc" title="From Country">
<option value="United States">United States</option>
<option value="Afghanistan">Afghanistan</option>
...
<option value="Zimbabwe">Zimbabwe</option>
</select>
...
<select id="tc" name="tc" title="To Country">
<option value="United States">United States</option>
<option value="Afghanistan">Afghanistan</option>
...
<option value="Zimbabwe">Zimbabwe</option>
</select>
...
<?php
$html = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $html;
}
and we would like to change it to something like:
function countrylist() {
<option value="United States">United States</option>
<option value="Afghanistan">Afghanistan</option>
...
<option value="Zimbabwe">Zimbabwe</option>
}
function form_function() {
ob_start();
?>
...
<select id="fc" name="fc" title="From Country">
<? countrylist () ?>
</select>
...
<select id="tc" name="tc" title="To Country">
<? countrylist () ?>
</select>
<?php
$html = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $html;
}
Any thoughts on how best to do this? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Maybe better change countrylist() function to
function countrylist()
{
$countries = array('USA', 'Canada', 'Ukraine');
foreach($countries as $country)
{
$html .= '<option value="'.$country.'">'.$country.'</option>'
}
return $html;
}
And in form_function() replace <? countrylist () ?> with <?= countrylist () ?>