Opening PHP statements - php

So I was just wondering if it was considered bad practice to open and close PHP statements, and let me explain what I mean. I know I can make variables at the beginning of my code but I like to group stuff together.I'm not sure if making one big PHP statement with all my variables is better / worse / same as opening and closing PHP statements similar to the example below.
<html>
<head></head> <---- HTML STUFF
<?php
(php stuff where connection to mysql db goes and other variables and errors)
?>
<body>
<html> <----- HTML stuff
<?php
(php stuff to call a specific table from DB)
?>
<html> <----- HTML stuff
<?php
(php stuff to call a specific table from DB)
?>
<html> <----- HTML stuff
<?php
(php stuff to call a specific table from DB)
?>
</body>
<html>
BTW the php variables I'm talking about are specific select statement from the DB.
ACTUAL CODE: or should select statements be at beg or sep file?
<table>
<tr>
<td align="left" width="200px">
Cover: Original Total
</td>
<td width="200px" align="center">
<?php
$original = "SELECT * FROM `comic_db`.`comic_db` WHERE comic_cover=\"original\"";
$orig_con = mysqli_query($comic_connect, $original);
$orig_total = mysqli_num_rows($orig_con);
echo $orig_total;
?>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="200px" align="left">
Cover: Variants Total
</td>
<td width="200px" align="center">
<?php
$variants = "SELECT * FROM `comic_db`.`comic_db` WHERE comic_cover=\"variant\"";
$variant_con = mysqli_query($comic_connect, $variants);
$variant_total = mysqli_num_rows($variant_con);
echo $variant_total;
?>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" width="200px">
Cover: Baby Totals
</td>
<td width="200px" align="center">
<?php
$baby = "SELECT * FROM `comic_db`.`comic_db` WHERE comic_cover=\"baby\"";
$baby_con = mysqli_query($comic_connect, $baby);
$baby_total = mysqli_num_rows($baby_con);
echo $baby_total;
?>

I'm assuming the repeated <html> tags in your example are just placeholders and would actually be <div>s and other elements making up the actual content of the page.
Your example is what's commonly called "spaghetti code" because it can quickly turn into an unmaintainable mess because you can't clearly see an overview of the HTML, nor can you see all the PHP code in one place.
The main thing to keep in mind is separating application logic (such as your database queries) from presentation (HTML and presentation logic like looping over an array to display it as an HTML list).
At the very least you'd want to put the main PHP code at the top of the file like you said, but it would be much better if it was in a separate file.
P.S. Any beginner book on PHP will discuss this in detail.

Related

Fill HTML table with PHP

I'm going nuts over this table.
In this page I'm supposed to show all the orders made by an user and the code is basically the same I used in another page, but the the PHP code won't freaking fill the HTML table.
<html>
<body>
<h1>Your orders</h1>
<table width = "550px" height = "300px" border="2" >
<tr bgcolor="#5f9ea0">
<td>Videogame</td>
<td>Price</td>
<td>Payment</td>
<td>Date</td>
<td>Delete order</td>
<td>Game received</td>
</tr>
<?php
$conn=pg_connect('dbname=project user=project password=project');
$user=$_SESSION['Userdata']['username'];
$query="SELECT o.IDOrder, v.Title, o.price, o.paymenttype, o.date FROM negozio_vg.order o INNER JOIN negozio_vg.videogame v ON o.videogame=vIDVideogame WHERE username='$user' ORDER BY o.date";
$result=pg_query($conn,$query);
while ($rows=pg_fetch_assoc($result)) {
printf("<tr><td>%s</td><td>%s</td><td>%s</td><td>%s</td><td>%s</td><td><a href='orderhandler.php'>Delete</a></td><td><a href='orderhandler.php'>Confirm</a></td></tr>", $rows['title'], $rows['price'],$rows['paymenttype'],$rows['date']);
}
?>
</table>
<form action="homeUser.php">
<input type="submit" value="Ritorna al menu">
</form>
</body>
</html>
I'm seriously going nuts, because, as I said, I used the same code in another page.
Even worse, the query actually works, and so does the while loop (I tried using an echo instead of a printf and it printed the whole order list)
Any suggestions?
You have 5 placeholders and provide only 4 values. It's possible the error is either suppressed or it's not displaying in the HTML. Regardless, either remove an %s or add another substitution value $rows['some_column_name']

How is this PHP while loop code creating new table rows?

You can see that I have a 3 element array. I am using a while loop to then print out all 3 values into a table, one row for each of the three values, but I do not understand how three rows are being printed out when I only have one row hard coded using html code. The PHP while loop does not echo the tr and td tags for each row because those row and detail tags are outside the PHP code. The code works -- it prints out one additional new table row for each value of "mary","donna","shirley", but I do not understand how. I could see it working if the tr and td tags were output by a PHP echo statement inside the while loop, but that is not the case here.
<html>
<body>
<table cellspacing ="2" cellpadding ="2" align ="center" border="8">
<?php
$ar1=["mary","donna","shirley"];
$len=count($ar1);
$ct=0;
?>
<?php while ( $ct<$len) { ?>
<tr>
<td>
<?php echo $ar1[$ct];
$ct++;
?>
</td>
</tr>
<?php } //end while loop?>
</table>
</body>
</html>
I believe the answer lies in the fact that HTML is an interpreted language not a compiled language.
So in this case your php while loop is setting the browser back to the spot just before your first tr tag so it goes through and interprets those tags again, and as it does this it puts them to the page again. Doing your while loop like this is a cheap way to do echos essentially.
I'm not a PHP master by any means, but from my understanding of how HTML is read and how PHP works this is my answer.
Your <tr> tag is inside the while loop. If you want just one row, try this-
<html>
<body>
<table cellspacing ="2" cellpadding ="2" align ="center" border="8">
<?php
$ar1=["mary","donna","shirley"];
$len=count($ar1);
$ct=0;
?>
<tr>
<?php while ( $ct<$len) { ?>
<td>
<?php echo $ar1[$ct];
$ct++;
?>
</td>
<?php } //end while loop?>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
This piece of code:
<?php while ( $ct<$len) { ?>
<tr>
<td>
<?php echo $ar1[$ct];
$ct++;
?>
</td>
</tr>
<?php } //end while loop?>
is the same as
<?php while ( $ct<$len) {
echo "<tr>
<td>";
echo $ar1[$ct];
$ct++;
echo "</td>
</tr>";
} //end while loop?>
if you analyze code more deeply..u will understand it yourself..you said "The php while loop does not echo the tr and td tags for each row because those row and detail tags are outside the php code"
but it does ..the html code is not the part of php code it coded outside php scope...and whenever your while loop executes it again reads the tr and tg tag and insert row and hence u get three rows printed ...
It's an easy case of PHP basic capabilities.
See http://php.net/manual/en/language.basic-syntax.phpmode.php
Everything outside of a pair of opening and closing tags is ignored by the PHP parser which allows PHP files to have mixed content.
PHP parser, don't need to know what is inside the While Loop, it just repeat to the output.
In a php file, by escaping the php code (by way of ?> you basicly say to the script, now comes something non php, you provide Html tags which are then interpreted by the browser as html code. But because you're still in the loop (you haven't ended it by adding an closing tag } you repeat the exit from the code, presenting html, and then entering the code again.
Some coders prefer to just exit php code and to show some html code with a few php tags here and there when there's a large amount of html being displayed. It's a lot less typing than continually using echo statements.

How to create a custom template system in PHP

I want to use a custom template system in my php application,
What I want is I want to keep away my php codes from design, I would like to use a tpl file for designs and a php file for php codes
I dont want to use any ready maid scripts. Can any one point out some links link or useful info how to build a php templating system to achieve this
Thank you
The way I do it is to create a template file(.tpl if you wish) and insert markers which will be replaced with str_replace in PHP. The code will look something like this:
For template.tpl file
<body>
<b>Something: </b> <!-- marker -->
</body>
For the PHP
$template = file_get_contents('template.tpl');
$some_data = 'Some Text'; //could be anything as long as the data is in a variable
$template = str_replace('<!-- marker -->', $some_data, $template);
echo $template;
That's it in a nutshell but it can get a lot more complex. The marker can be anything as long as it's unique.
I want to keep away my php codes from design, I would like to use a tpl file for designs
...and mix your tpl codes with "design"!
what's the difference then? :)
PHP itself is efficient templating system.
And nowadays most developers agreed that dividing your PHP code to business logic part and display logic part is most preferable way.
It can be very limited subset of PHP of course. You will need an output operator (<?=$var?>) one, a condition <? if(): ?>...<? endif ?>, a loop <? foreach(): ?>...<? endforeach ?> and include.
An example of such a template:
<table>
<? foreach ($data as $row): ?>
<tr>
<td><b><?=$row['name'] ?></td>
<td><?=$row['date'] ?></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan=2><?=$row['body'] ?></td>
</tr>
<? if ($row['answer']): ?>
<tr>
<td colspan=2 valign="top">
<table>
<tr>
<td valign="top"><b>Answer: </b></td>
<td><?=$row['answer'] ?></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<? endif ?>
<? if($admin): ?>
<tr>
<td colspan=2>
<? if($row['del']): ?>
show
<? else: ?>
hide
<? endif ?>
edit
</td>
</tr>
<? endif ?>
<? endforeach ?>
</table>

make array object in for loop with horizontal view

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file('http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=London');
$information = $xml->xpath("/xml_api_reply/weather/forecast_information");
$current = $xml->xpath("/xml_api_reply/weather/current_conditions");
$forecast_list = $xml->xpath("/xml_api_reply/weather/forecast_conditions");
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>Google Weather API</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1><?php print $information[0]->city['data']; ?></h1>
<h2>Today's weather</h2>
<div class="weather">
<img src="<?php echo 'http://www.google.com' . $current[0]->icon['data']?>" alt="weather"?>
<span class="condition">
<?php echo round(conver_f_c($current[0]->temp_f['data'])); ?>° C,
<?php echo $current[0]->condition['data'] ?>
</span>
</div>
<h2>Forecast</h2>
<?php foreach ($forecast_list as $forecast) : ?>
<div class="weather">
<img src="<?php echo 'http://www.google.com' . $forecast->icon['data']?>" alt="weather"?>
<div><?php echo $forecast->day_of_week['data']; ?></div>
<span class="condition">
<?php echo round(conver_f_c($forecast->low['data'])); ?>° C - <?php echo round(conver_f_c($forecast->high['data'])); ?>° C,
<?php echo $forecast->condition['data'] ?>
</span>
</div>
<?php endforeach ?>
</body>
</html>
<?php
function conver_f_c($F){
return $C = ($F − 32) * 5/9;
}
I want Out somthing like this manner of the horizontal ,
Even i tried UL LI WITH display inline but it goes failed,
Tell me some good suggestion for my probme,
I want exactly like horizontal, expecting exactly like screen shot ,
Tell me How to render using php
Thanks
alt text http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/7518/weatherhori.jpg
Above snippet present display out verticly , i want o change that verticle to horizonatal ,
somthing like this screen shot
<table>...</table>
Update
From your latest comment so far:
i know how to fetch array and display
it, but i dont know to fetch and
display in the verticl manner that is
the stuck up
I feel this is going to be a stupid answer but it appears to be what you don't understand...
The web is based in a markup language called HTML. This language has tags (delimited by angle-brackets) that allow you to define the structure of a document. On top of this, you have another language called CSS. This other lang allow you to define how HTML is going to be displayed on screen.
You may argue that you already have a web page and you've written it with the PHP language instead of the two other langs I've mentioned. That's not enterely true: you code in PHP, sure, but you use PHP to generate HTML. And it's HTML what finally reaches the browser (Firefox, Explorer...). PHP is executed in the web server, not in the browser. The browser can only see whatever HTML you've generated.
To sum up: you have to forget about PHP, Google and the whole weather thingy. You first need to write a static HTML document and style it with CSS. Once you've done with it, you can finally replace the parts of the information that are dynamic with values taken from your PHP variables.
And since you seem to need a table to display tabular data, the appropriate HTML tag is <table>:
<table>
<tr>
<th>Web</th>
<th>Thu</th>
<th>Fri</th>
<th>Sat</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><img src="/path/to/pics/cloudy.png" width="25" height="25" alt="Cloudy"></td>
<td><img src="/path/to/pics/sunny.png" width="25" height="25" alt="Sunny"></td>
<td><img src="/path/to/pics/rainy.png" width="25" height="25" alt="Rainy"></td>
<td><img src="/path/to/pics/cloudy.png" width="25" height="25" alt="Cloudy"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>26ºC</td>
<td>26ºC</td>
<td>22ºC</td>
<td>25ºC</td>
</tr>
<table>
I suggest you find some tutorials about basic HTML and CSS. They'll be of invaluable help.
This is what's done by Google :
http://jsfiddle.net/bW8NA/1

How to properly indent PHP/HTML mixed code? [closed]

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When mixing PHP and HTML, what is the proper indentation style to use? Do I indent so that the outputted HTML has correct indentation, or so that the PHP/HTML mix looks properly formatted (and is thus easier to read)?
For example, say I have a foreach loop outputting table rows. Which one below is correct?
PHP/HTML mix looks correct:
<table>
<?php foreach ($rows as $row): ?>
<tr>
<?php if ($row->foo()): ?>
<?php echo $row ?>
<?php else: ?>
Something else
<?php endif ?>
</tr>
<?php endforeach ?>
</table>
Outputted HTML looks correct:
<table>
<?php foreach ($rows as $row): ?>
<tr>
<?php if ($row->foo()): ?>
<?php echo $row ?>
<?php else: ?>
Something else
<?php endif ?>
</tr>
<?php endforeach ?>
</table>
I've found that when I run into this situation (quite frequently), I don't have a standard style to use. I know that there may not be a "correct" answer, but I'd love to hear thoughts from other developers.
The PHP and the HTML should each be indented so that they are correct with respect to themselves in source form, irrespective of each other and of outputted form:
<table>
<?php foreach ($rows as $row): ?>
<tr>
<?php if ($row->foo()): ?>
<?php echo $row ?>
<?php else: ?>
Something else
<?php endif ?>
</tr>
<?php endforeach ?>
</table>
I often pondered this question too, but then I realized, who cares what the HTML output looks like? Your users shouldn't be looking at your HTML anyway. It's for YOU to read, and maybe a couple other developers. Keep the source code as clean as possible and forget about what the output looks like.
If you need to debug the output, use Chrome Developer Tools, Firebug, or even F12 Tools.
I generally put opening php tags at the beginning of the line, but indent whatever is inside the tags to match the html formatting. I don't do this, however, for simple echo statements since I use short-open tags. I think it makes simpler it when browsing through the file to find all the declarations.
<table>
<? foreach ($foo as $bar): ?>
<tr>
<? foreach ($bar as $baz): ?>
<td><?=$baz?></td>
<? endforeach ?>
</tr>
<? endforeach ?>
</table>
Direct answer to your question: If you need to read the HTML output often, it might be a good thing to output well indented HTML. But the more common case will be that you need to read your php source code, so it is more important that the source is easily readable.
Alternative to the two options you mentioned: See chaos' or tj111's answer.
Better still in my opinion: Don't mix HTML and php, use a template engine instead.
You can always use a bit of whitespace too to help readability. Building on chaos' indentation:
<table>
<?php foreach ($rows as $row): ?>
<tr>
<?php if ($row->foo()): ?>
<?php echo $row ?>
<?php else: ?>
Something else
<?php endif ?>
</tr>
<?php endforeach ?>
</table
The only downside with this is if you have a lot of mixed code it can make your document twice as long, which makes for more scrolling. Although if you have this much mixed code you may want to consider a templating engine.
You should not be bothered about markup indentation in the production environment. Neither should you use Tidy or other HTML purifiers. There are valid use cases, e.g. when you allow HTML input (but consider using Markdown instead), though these are rare.
Most often HTML beautifiers-filters are abused to hide the underlying issues with the code. Don't. Correct your markup manually.
If you need to indent your code only in the development environment, you can use either of the above. However, beware that these libraries will attempt to fix your markup (that's their primary purpose; indentation is a by-product). I've written Regular Expression based indentation tool Dindent.
Dindent will convert markup like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<script>
console.log('te> <st');
function () {
test; <!-- <a> -->
}
</script>
<div>
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div><table border="1" style="background-color: red;"><tr><td>A cell test!</td>
<td colspan="2" rowspan="2"><table border="1" style="background-color: green;"><tr> <td>Cell</td><td colspan="2" rowspan="2"></td></tr><tr>
<td><input><input><input></td></tr><tr><td>Cell</td><td>Cell</td><td>Ce
ll</td></tr></table></td></tr><tr><td>Test <span>Ce ll</span></td></tr><tr><td>Cell</td><td>Cell</td><td>Cell</td></tr></table></div></div>
</body>
</html>
To this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<script>
console.log('te> <st');
function () {
test; <!-- <a> -->
}
</script>
<div>
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div>
<table border="1" style="background-color: red;">
<tr>
<td>A cell test!</td>
<td colspan="2" rowspan="2">
<table border="1" style="background-color: green;">
<tr>
<td>Cell</td>
<td colspan="2" rowspan="2"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<input>
<input>
<input>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cell</td>
<td>Cell</td>
<td>Ce ll</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Test <span>Ce ll</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cell</td>
<td>Cell</td>
<td>Cell</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Dindent will not attempt to sanitise or otherwise interfere with your code beyond adding indentation. This is to make your development/debugging easier. Not for production.

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