Using PHP When Possible

PHP January 14, 2008

In recent months, I've gotten in the habit of writing things in PHP arrays, using a function with a loop to actually generate HTML. This works great for anything where you have repeating elements (such as a table, lists, navigation, images, etc.). The benefit is that it's much clearer when you need to change the text - rather than looking through HTML code and brackets, you can just change the text:

$arr = array(

  "Home"    => "home.php",

  "About"   => "about.php",

  "Contact" => "contact.php"

);



echo '<ul>';

foreach($arr as $k=>$v) {

  echo '<li><a href="'.$v.'">'.$k.'</a></li>';

}

echo '</ul>';

Instead of hand-writing each navigation button in their HTML form, here we separate them into two parts: the text-only array and then the HTML code which doesn't ever have to be touched. Thus, it's much easier and faster to edit (especially for those who don't know HTML and are afraid to touch code!).

The same thing can be said for tables - perhaps each item in the array is a row which maps to its own array of table cells with data. Whatever the case, it's much easier to separate the text from the HTML and it saves time later.

I've had to do numerous websites for clients who then go on to edit the code themselves for updates (this is, of course, if they opt not to include a content-management system). So using this approach makes it easier for them to edit their pages without worrying they'll mess up the code. User Experience behind the scenes!

Just a useful note in case you didn't know :^P

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