Echoing HTML within your PHP - php

Question

This is more of a wondering than a technical question and Im sorry if this questions seems daft or the answer is obvious to some but I was wondering...
Is it better to always echo out any HTML you need to write or to close the PHP tags when you need to write HTML and re-open again after? essentially embedding the PHP within the HTML?
Here is an example of each:
for($x=0;$x<count($customers);$x++)
{
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td><a class=summary href=mailto:'.$customers[$x]["Email"].'>'.$customers[$x]["Email"].'</td>';
echo '<td>'.$customers[$x]["Title"].'</td>';
echo '<td>'.$customers[$x]["FirstName"].'</td>';
echo '<td>'.$customers[$x]["Surname"].'</td>';
echo '<td>'.$customers[$x]["DeliveryCountryID"].'</td>';
echo '<td>'.$customers[$x]["LanguageID"].'</td>';
echo '</tr>';
}
that shows ALL HTML being echo'd
<?php
for($x=0;$x<count($customers);$x++)
{
?>
<tr>
<td><?=$customers[$x]["Email"]?></td>
<td><?=$customers[$x]["Title"]?></td>
<td><?=$customers[$x]["FirstName"]?></td>
<td><?=$customers[$x]["Surname"]?></td>
<td><?=$customers[$x]["DeliveryCountryID"]?></td>
<td><?=$customers[$x]["LanguageID"]?></td>
</tr>
<?php
}
?>
there is the example of embedding PHP within the HTML.
The reason I ask is because i'm at the start of my programming career I'm low on experience and Ive joined a company where their old developer, obviously more experienced than myself echo'd EVERYTHING out.
I have never done it this way as I like to embed PHP into my HTML and I find his code difficult to read sometimes.
Is there a reason he did it this way or is that the best way or would it be worth me slowly changing the code to be more like how I tend to do things?

Answer 1

The best way would be to use a template engine such as Smarty and separate your business logic and presentation. This gives you more flexibility on your code.
In your case I would prefer the second approach ("<td><?=$customers[$x]["Email"]?></td>") as it is easy to read and understand. This also has two more advantages,
if you have someone else working on the application such as a designer, making changes will be easier for him.
In future if you decide to use to a template engine you can easily convert your code.

Answer 2

First ask yourself what "better" means.
If "better" is something that is more readable, you can face the following problems:
In HTML code, if there are some <?php echo $var[attr]; ?> you can easily miss them.
In PHP code if there are lots of echo '<tr><td ............................ '; you can have problems with understanding what's inside, especially if you have lots of escaped characters. You have to add a newline character.
My answer: it depends what is more important to you: HTML? use 1. PHP? use 2.
If "better" is something faster, than use 1. Less to parse is less time-consuming. But does this time really matter?
If "better" is something shorter and less memory-consuming, the HTML files have less text. But does those bytes really matter?
Anyway, I always avoid merging both two methods, for example:
<div>
<p>Some text....</p>
<!-- some other stuff like lots of form fields -->
<?php
// some php code
echo '</div>';
That's because in IDEs you can easier find errors like unclosed tags if it does not look into PHP.

Answer 3

This is personal preference, but the practice I've seen most common is to have the HTML be the base and insert the PHP where necessary. As someone else stated, separate your business logic from your presentation. Use a separate directory for functions or your code-behind, then at the beginning of your document do an include_once. That way your presentation code is fairly straightforward HTML (usually easier for designers to handle), and the PHP is used to insert what is needed.
This is especially helpful when PHP is being used like a CMS or using database-driven web content. Whenever possible, separate your logic from your presentation.

Answer 4

There are many ways to echo'd your code. and you can't consider that this is the best way.
all things is depend on you. what you like? on my way I like to embed PHP in HTML (second approach). but may be other like echo'd all HTML code in php.
The whole thing is depend on you. what you choose. all are same