templating, and loops with an HTML table

KillGorack · February 12, 2022

Hey,

No real issue below works, but I'm trying to find best practices. Is the below normal, or is there a better more concise way to do it?

    private function lst($content)
    {

      $html = <<<"EOT"
      <table class="data clickable admin">
        <thead>
          <tr>

      EOT;

      foreach(array_keys($content[0]) as $key){
        $html .= <<<"EOT"
              <th>{$key}</th>

        EOT;
      }

      $html .= <<<"EOT"
          </tr>
        </thead>

      EOT;

      $html .= <<<"EOT"
        <tbody>

      EOT;

      foreach($content as $row){
        $html .= <<<"EOT"
          <tr>

        EOT;
        foreach($row as $cell){
          $html .= <<<"EOT"
              <td>{$cell}</td>

          EOT;
        }
        $html .= <<<"EOT"
          </tr>

        EOT;
      }

      $html .= <<<"EOT"
        </tbody>

      EOT;

      $html .= <<<"EOT"
      </table>

      EOT;

      return $html;
    }

KillGorack · February 12, 2022

Normally I would do this..

  function tableInator($data, $class = "")
  {
    $html = "<table class=\"{$class}\">\r\n";
    $html .= "<thead>\r\n";
    $html .= "<tr><th>".implode("</th><th>", array_keys($data[0]))."</th></th>\r\n";
    $html .= "</thead>\r\n";
    $html .= "<tbody>\r\n";
    foreach($data as $datum){
      $html .= "<tr><td>".implode("</td><td>", $datum)."</td></tr>\r\n";
    }
    $html .= "</tbody>\r\n";
    $html .= "</table>\r\n";
    return $html;
  }

mac_gyver · February 12, 2022

that's a LOT of typing, especially for the static sections containing no dynamic values. you need to use templates, with tags in it for the dynamic sections, then either write your own templating code or use one of the existing templating engines.

here's the tag documentation for one of the popular templating engines showing how to display values, implement if conditional statements, and loops - https://github.com/bobthecow/mustache.php/wiki/Mustache-Tags

Barand · February 12, 2022

or go with an approach like this

<?php
    // GET FUNCTION CALLS OUT OF THE WAY
    $thead = "<tr><th>".implode("</th><th>", array_keys($data[0]))."</th></th>\r\n";
    $tdata = '';
    foreach($data as $datum){
      $tdata .= "<tr><td>".implode("</td><td>", $datum)."</td></tr>\r\n";
    }
    // THEN
    $html = <<<HTML
       <table class="$class">
       <thead>
          $thead
       </thead>
       <tbody>
          $tdata
       </tbody>
       </table>
HTML;
?>

mac_gyver · February 12, 2022

template method -

<?php

require 'Mustache/src/Mustache/Autoloader.php';
Mustache_Autoloader::register();

$m = new Mustache_Engine;

// define template
$tpl = "
<table{{#class}} class='{{class}}'{{/class}}>
	<thead>
		<tr>
		{{#headings}}
			<th>{{.}}</th>
		{{/headings}}
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
	{{#rows}}
		<tr>
		{{#.}}
			<td>{{.}}</td>
		{{/.}}
		</tr>
	{{/rows}}
	</tbody>
</table>
";

// fake your existing data
$class = "data clickable admin";
$data = [];
$data[] = ['c1'=>'r0v1','c2'=>'r0v2','c3'=>'r0v3','c4'=>'r0v4','c5'=>'r0v5'];
$data[] = ['c1'=>'r1v1','c2'=>'r1v2','c3'=>'r1v3','c4'=>'r1v4','c5'=>'r1v5'];
$data[] = ['c1'=>'r2v1','c2'=>'r2v2','c3'=>'r2v3','c4'=>'r2v4','c5'=>'r2v5'];


// array_map call-back function to get only array values
function _array_values($arr)
{
	return array_values($arr);
}

// populate template data
$tpl_data = [];
$tpl_data['class'] = $class;
$tpl_data['headings'] = array_keys($data[0]);
$tpl_data['rows'] = array_map('_array_values',$data);

// echo the rendered template
echo $m->render($tpl, $tpl_data);

result -



<table class='data clickable admin'>
	<thead>
		<tr>
			<th>c1</th>
			<th>c2</th>
			<th>c3</th>
			<th>c4</th>
			<th>c5</th>
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>r0v1</td>
			<td>r0v2</td>
			<td>r0v3</td>
			<td>r0v4</td>
			<td>r0v5</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>r1v1</td>
			<td>r1v2</td>
			<td>r1v3</td>
			<td>r1v4</td>
			<td>r1v5</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>r2v1</td>
			<td>r2v2</td>
			<td>r2v3</td>
			<td>r2v4</td>
			<td>r2v5</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

note: htmlspecialchars is applied to all values by default, so any html special characters in a value won't break the html syntax, or allow html, css, or javascirpt to be operated on by the browser.

maxxd · February 13, 2022

I'm glad to know Mustache.php is still active - it's the first template system I used in php. Right now I'm using mostly Laravel so I'm on Blade, but before that I was using Twig, which is syntactically very similar and just kinda awesome.

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templating, and loops with an HTML table

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