Interesting thing I just learned about outputting text

07-28-2002, 03:04 AM

Most PHP books begin by telling you how you can output text using echo or print. I find it interesting how the langauge can display text without even any explicit function calls:

<?
$test=1;
if ($test==1){
?>

This text is displayed if $test equals 1

<?
}
?>

Coming from JavaScript, this really illustrates how PHP is a server side language, and JavaScript is not :)

Spookster

07-28-2002, 03:23 AM

Yes that is a useful feature being able to just intermix php and html in that manner. I use that technique in both PHP and JSP.

firepages

07-28-2002, 09:50 AM

A common mistake (especially with those with a PERL background) is to echo() or print() everything.

PHP parses pages differently to some other languages in that it does not jump in and out of 'parser' mode when parsing a file so...

<?
echo "<html>";
echo "<body>";
echo $php_var;
echo "more_html";
echo $another_var;
echo "</body>";
echo "</html>";
?>

is SLOWER than

<html>
<body>
<?echo $php_var;?>
..some html
<?echo $another_var;?>
</body>
</html>

as PHP ignores anything that is not enclosed in PHP tags and parses the bits it finds.

another excellent saver is

<?readfile('some_file.txt);?>

which passes the contents of some_file.txt directly to the browser so its a bit like using include() only a little faster (good for big blocks of text/html)

other lifesaver that most PHPers find out after hours of string_replace()ing etc , is

echo nl2br($string);

which takes text from input with newlines (say a textarea) and tags a onto the end for you (XHTML compliant as well!) - the newline is not replaced so your code still looks neat when you view source etc , &

trim($string)

which cleans up whitespace and newlines especially good for password input etc

just thought I would pop those out now as they are perhaps where I wasted the most time when I started with PHP ... anyone else with any lifesavers ??

Phip

07-28-2002, 10:50 AM

htmlentities($string, ENT_QUOTES)

cleans out all the html tags so people can't mess up your hard work by posting something like <table><tr> :thumbsup:

Jeewhizz

07-30-2002, 09:54 PM

Also, this will work... (nabbed some example html from this page :))

<?
//php code here
echo<<<code;
<td width="50%" height="50"> CodingForums.com 
code;
?>

I.e. no commenting needed :)

Jee

Spookster

07-30-2002, 10:22 PM

Originally posted by Jeewhizz
Also, this will work... (nabbed some example html from this page :))

<?
//php code here
echo<<<code;
<td width="50%" height="50"> CodingForums.com 
code;
?>

I.e. no commenting needed :)

Jee

Yes that is heredoc syntax. Available since php4. You can also store it in a variable for echoing at a later time as well. I used it in a reply for someone else here

http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2276