making page source readable in php

[guilmet]

I am writing a php page, using echo for the html tags, but when I view page source, it's a mess.

 

Is because of echo? is there something else to use instead?

[MatthewJ]

you can do some formatting of the source using \t and \n (tab and new line).

<?php

echo "<h1><p>This source will all be on one line</p></h1>";

?>

 

<?php

echo "<h1>\n\t<p>This source will all be on multiple lines</p>\n</h1>\n";

?>

[HPWebSolutions]

I'd like to recommend not echo'ing the source tags, only echo the values you need in the code.  There are a few reasons for this.  1) a good IDE has syntax highlighting for the html code. 2) a good IDE can help you find errors in your HTML code, such as unclosed tags, and can't do this if you are echoing the tags. 3) It is a lot easier for the developer to read the HTML code in the server side source, even without syntax highlighting, when the HTML code is separated from the PHP. 4) It makes it a lot easier to change up the layout of the page later on. 

 

If you put a whole bunch of \t and \n formatting tags into your code, it is probably going to become an eyesore to read and debug.

 

For example:

 

<?
foreach($array as $key=>$val) {
  echo '<tr><td>The value of '.$key.' is: </td><td>'.$val.'</td></tr>';
}

/*   becomes easier to read:   */

foreach($array as $key=>$val) {
  ?>
  <tr><td>The value of <?php echo $key; ?> is: </td><td><?php echo $val; ?></td></tr>;
<? } ?>

 

[Garethp]

Your problem is that you aren't using spaces. Try this

 

echo "Some tags

";

 

See how I put the end of the echo on the next line, try it, it'll make your source easier to read

[guilmet]

Thank you HPWebSolutions.

 

I was thinking of that actually, writing the page as an html with php extension, and just use the php inline.