Better way to create html code from php variables? - php

Question

My website consists of many products that are each contained in a div with the id content block. The link, image, background, description and price are all loaded from a mySQL table. My original plan was to save the below html code as a string and loop over the rows in the mySQL table filling the string I created with php/mySQL values.
I was wondering if I am going about this the right way, or is there a better way to create html code from php variables?
<div id="contentblock" style="background-image:url(images/$BACKGROUND.png);">
<div id="picture"><img src="$IMAGELINK"/></div>
<div id="description"><p>$DESCRIPTION</p></div>
<div id="price"><p class=price>$PRICE</p></div>
</div>

Answer 1

Firstly PHP is a template engine - in my experience template engines that layer ontop of PHP are only good for the simplest of cases and are easily outgrown.
Secondly the original code is as good as any method. At risk of stating the obvious to make it better abstract it into a function;
function output_block($BACKGROUND, $LINK, $IMAGELINK, $DESCRIPTION, $PRICE)
{
echo "<div id='contentblock' style='background-image:url(images/$BACKGROUND.png);'>
<div id='picture'><a href='$LINK'><img src='$IMAGELINK'/></a></div>
<div id='description'><p>$DESCRIPTION</p></div>
<div id='price'><p class=price>$PRICE</p></div>
</div>";
}
If you want to make it much better then adopt a framework, an entire admin config page is show below. All of the HTML glue is provided by the framework - the following code is real, but really to illustrate how a framework can provide a lot of the grunge work for you.
In the example below if I want to edit a single entity I'd change the TableViewEdit into a FormView and provide an instance of an entity rather than an iterable list.
$entity = new CbfConfig(); // Database entity
$page = new AdminWebPage("Site Configuration"); // Page for output
/*
* build the view
*/
$vil = new ViewItemList();
$col = &$vil->add(new ViewItem("description","Description"));
$col->get_output_transform()->allow_edit(false); // this field cannot be editted
$col = &$vil->add(new ViewItem("value","Value"));
$v1 = new TableViewEdit($entity, $vil,"admin_values"); // present as standard editable table
/*
* output the page
*/
$page->begin();
$iterable_list = CbfConfig::site_begin();
$page->add_body($v1->get_output($iterable_list,'admin_config'));
$page->end();

Answer 2

Id just have all my html code outside of php tags, then whereever I need a variable from php do as follows
<div id="description"><p><?php echo $DESCRIPTION; ?></p></div>
You can loop around non php code too. For example
<?php
for($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
?>
<div id="description"><p><?php echo $i; ?></p></div>
<?php
} //end for loop
?>
Obviously this is just an example.

Answer 3

well if im without a template engine for somereason i usually do something like:
function partial($file, $args = array()) {
extract($args);
ob_start();
include($file);
return ob_get_clean();
}

Answer 4

Really, there are 3 ways of doing this. Use whichever is easiest for you in the context that you are using it in.
<?php
while(($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result))!==false)
{
echo "<div>{$row['fieldName']}</div>";
}
?>
<?php
while(($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result))!==false)
{
echo '<div>'.$row['fieldName'].'</div>';
}
?>
<?php
while(($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result))!==false)
{
?>
<div><?= $row['fieldName']; ?></div>
<?php
}
?>