can anyone reproduce this?...WIERD.

[Leeoniya]

I think my PHP engine is broken. The result of the first version in place of where 'contacts' should appear is wrong. i get the following: " contacts=""

PHP Code:

$list = "contacts";
echo "<a href='#' onclick=select('ALL', '$list')>Select All</a>"; 


with the space removed after 'ALL', everything works fine:

PHP Code:

$list = "contacts";
echo "<a href='#' onclick=select('ALL','$list')>Select All</a>"; 


anyone?
Leon

[rafiki]

you should not have a variable ($list) inside single quotes, ' ' without concatinating it
you could have

PHP Code:

echo "<a href='#' onclick=select('ALL',"$list")>Select All</a>"; 


or

PHP Code:

echo "<a href='#' onclick=select('ALL',''.$list.'')>Select All</a>"; 


[GJay]

the "s at the start and end are the ones that matter, it should be parsed. The code you've given works fine for me, is that exactly what you are using or have you 'simplified' it for the purposes of the question?

[Ahri]

I don't know what Rafiki is talking about; your use of a PHP variable inside double quotes is perfectly acceptable.

However, I can guess that the reason it only works without a space is because you're not being very kind to browsers; some browsers might work out that you're trying to give 'onclick' the value returned by the function select(), so they might parse until the closing bracket, but honestly if I was writing a browser I wouldn't try to compensate for that sort of laziness, and apparently neither is the browser you're testing in -- it's being charitable enough by assuming that the string is delimited by spaces, as such the value of 'onclick' becomes "select('ALL'," -- so it breaks.

You're supposed to encapsulate string values in quotes in HTML so you're going to have to do it properly;

PHP Code:

$list = "contacts";
echo "<a href='#' onclick=\"select('ALL', '$list')\">Select All</a>";
# result: <a href='#' onclick="select('ALL', 'contacts')">Select All</a> 


That should parse just fine on any browser.

If you don't like having to escape the quotes then you're better off using PHP as the templating engine it was designed to be;

<a href="#" onclick="select('ALL', '<?=$list;?>')">Select All</a>

[rafiki]

i wasnt talkin about double quotes i was stating that he had a " '$var' "; and wasnt sure if you should concatinate it, i was giving a lead as to why it might have done it, which may or may not be helpfull, but GJAY corrected it

[GJay]

My mistake for not actually testing in a browser (just the command-line), Ahri's suggestion makes sense.

[Leeoniya]

thanks guys. technically, the lack of spaces is really no big deal. but it makes more sense now. i'll go with the escaping option.

i would use this:

PHP Code:

<a href="#" onclick="select('ALL', '<?=$list;?>')">Select All</a>

...except the entire page has too much dynamic content to continually go into and out of php mode; most of those echo lines are inside of one-liner foreach() loops, it seems like a silly amount of extra code to justify switching modes that often.

Leon

[aedrin]

Originally Posted by rafiki

you should not have a variable ($list) inside single quotes, ' ' without concatinating it
you could have

PHP Code:

echo "<a href='#' onclick=select('ALL',"$list")>Select All</a>"; 


or

PHP Code:

echo "<a href='#' onclick=select('ALL',''.$list.'')>Select All</a>"; 


Both of these aren't proper code.

...except the entire page has too much dynamic content to continually go into and out of php mode; most of those echo lines are inside of one-liner foreach() loops, it seems like a silly amount of extra code to justify switching modes that often.

Correct. It is silly.

It is much better to do it like this:

PHP Code:

$result = array(/* content */);

foreach ($result as $list) {
    echo '<a href="#" onclick="select(\'ALL\', \'' . $list . '\'); return false;">';
} 


The problem is that with both HTML and JavaScript you're going to have to escape something. Either the JavaScript, or the HTML. I find that often the JavaScript is easier to escape as it is easier to read when your HTML is clean. Using echo prevents PHP from switching in and out of PHP mode which is indeed more intensive.

EDIT: Not to mention that double quotes are the proper quoting method for HTML (at least in XHTML I believe.)