PHP within HTML etiquette [closed] - php

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This has been bothering me for quite some time and I want to know what the typical etiquette is when writing PHP code within HTML.
I have the following code:
<?php
$country_list = array("AF"=>"Afghanistan", "AL"=>"Albania", "DZ"=>"Algeria");
echo '<div class="some-class">
<font color="red">Just some text.</font>
<select>';
foreach($country_list as $country_code => $country_name) {
echo '<option value="' . $country_code . '">' . $country_name;
}
echo '</select>
</div>';
?>
This to me looks extremely ugly because of how the HTML isn't lined up and it's hard to work with something that doesn't look good.
Is there any way I can improve so that it looks better? Is there some sort of PHP etiquette when writing PHP code like this inline with HTML?
Thanks.

Answer 1

It's common practice to separate your code that outputs the HTML (the "view") from your logic (typically in a "controller"). At a minimum, this can be done with PHP code that just handles output, but is usually done with a template engine, such as Smarty.
A template engine can be overkill if you have a simple application. In these cases, there are some things you can do to clean up your code:
Disregard HTML indentation. Only worry about your code indentation in PHP. That's where it matters to you anyway. If you need to use indented HTML, let your browser's developer tools worry about it.
Avoid closing/opening PHP tags repeatedly. Just stick to echo. Again, if you need to mix PHP and HTML so much that you feel the need to repeatedly close/open PHP tags, consider a template engine.
Finally, be sure to use htmlspecialchars() around any arbitrary data you output into HTML to ensure that you are generating valid HTML, and avoiding certain kinds of XSS attack vulnerabilities.

Answer 2

This is all pretty subjective stuff, but you could consider only breaking into PHP when absolutely necessary:
<div class="some-class">
<font color="red">Just some text.</font>
<select>
<?php
$country_list = array("AF"=>"Afghanistan", "AL"=>"Albania", "DZ"=>"Algeria");
foreach ($country_list as $country_code => $country_name) {
printf('<option value="%s">%s</option>', $country_code, $country_name);
}
?>
</select>
</div>
I shall assume your values don't need to be escaped here, i.e. no "naughty countries".
Alternatively, there are template engines that can help you with it, such as PHPTAL:
<div class="some-class">
<font color="red">Just some text.</font>
<select>
<option tal:repeat="country countries" tal:attributes="value repeat/country/key" tal:content="country" />
</select>
</div>
PHP code:
$tal = new PHPTAL('path/to/template');
$tal->set('countries', $countries);
echo $tal->execute();
The nice thing here is that everything stays in HTML mode and you've separated display logic (how to show data) from business logic (how to generate it).

Answer 3

this is what I usually do
<?php
$country_list = array("AF"=>"Afghanistan", "AL"=>"Albania", "DZ"=>"Algeria");
$countries = '';
foreach($country_list as $country_code => $country_name) {
$countries. = '<option value="' . $country_code . '">' . $country_name;
}
?>
//html part
div class="some-class">
<font color="red">Just some text.</font>
<select name="country>
<?php echo $countries; ?>
</select>
</div

Answer 4

You could do something like this... I do it sometimes
<?php
$country_list = array("AF"=>"Afghanistan", "AL"=>"Albania", "DZ"=>"Algeria");
?>
<div class="some-class">
<font color="red">Just some text.</font>
<select>
<?php foreach($country_list as $country_code => $country_name) { ?>
<option value="<?=$country_code?>"><?=$country_name?></option>
<?php } ?>
<select>
</div>

Answer 5

Not sure about "etiquette" but echoing HTML may not be the best idea. Maybe something like this:
<div class="some-class">
Just some text
<select>
<?php
foreach($country_list as $country_code => $country_name) {
?>
<option value="<?php echo $country_code;?>">
<?php echo $country_name; ?>
</option>
<?php
}
?>
</select>
</div>
So minimize echoing HTML tags.