Adding HTML to My PHP Page

[tomyknoker]

Hi all,

Forgive me if this is an obvious question, Say I have this page

<?php
$cat = $_GET['cat'];

/* connect to the mysql database and use a query to get the members info */

include 'library/config.php';
include 'library/opendb.php';

//navigation
include("nav.php");


/* set the allowed order by columns */

$default_sort = 'LastName';
$allowed_order = array ('JoinDate', 'FirstName','LastName', 'loginDateTime');

/* if order is not set, or it is not in the allowed
 * list, then set it to a default value. Otherwise, 
 * set it to what was passed in. */
if (!isset ($_GET['order']) || 
    !in_array ($_GET['order'], $allowed_order)) {
    $order = $default_sort;
} else {
    $order = $_GET['order'];
}

/* construct and run our query */
$query = "SELECT * FROM tblmembers WHERE `MemberApproved`='$cat'   ORDER BY $order";

$result = mysql_query ($query);

/* make sure data was retrieved */
$numrows = mysql_num_rows($result);
if ($numrows == 0) {
    echo "No data to display!";
    exit;
}

/* now grab the first row and start the table */
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc ($result);
echo "<TABLE border=1>\n";
echo "<TR>\n";
foreach ($row as $heading=>$column) {
    /* check if the heading is in our allowed_order
     * array. If it is, hyperlink it so that we can
     * order by this column */
    echo "<TD><b>";
    if (in_array ($heading, $allowed_order)) {
        echo "<a href=\"{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}?order=$heading&cat=$cat\">$heading</a>";
    } else {
        echo $heading;
    }                
    echo "</b></TD>\n";
}
echo "</TR>\n";

/* reset the $result set back to the first row and 
 * display the data */
mysql_data_seek ($result, 0);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc ($result)) {
    echo "<TR>\n";
    foreach ($row as $column) {
        echo "<TD>$column</TD>\n";
    }
    echo "</TR>\n";
}
echo "</TABLE>\n";
?

I want to add div tags around the nav.php, and then also around the table below, but when I do this it makes the display errors, is it not just as simple as adding

<div ="navigation">//navigation
include("nav.php");</div>

[codeexploiter]

have you tried this?

echo "<div id='navigation'>";
include("nav.php");
echo "</div>";

[Twey]

Or:

?>
  <div id="navigation">
    <?php
      include('nav.php');
    ?>
  </div>
<?php

I always prefer the latter, as it is very difficult to maintain nicely-formatted code when using echo statements.

[mburt]

Yes. What he said, and also: you can put PHP statements anywhere on the HTML page. Even in JavaScript, so if you wanted it on the same line, simply put it on the same line. Remember to use <?php and ?>.
Example:

<title><?php echo strtoupper(substr($_GET["p"],0,1).substr($_GET["p"],1,strlen($_GET["p"])); ?></title>

[Twey]

Likewise, you can put HTML just about anywhere in PHP. A block of HTML is roughly equivalent to an echo statement.

<?php if(user_is_logged_in()) { ?>
  <a href="logout.php">Log Out</a>
<?php } ?>

is fine, as is:

<?php while($paragraph = mysql_fetch_array($results)) { ?>
  <h3><?php echo $paragraph['title']; ?></h3>
  <p>
    <img src="<?php echo $paragraph['image']; ?>" alt="<?php echo $paragraph['image_alt']; ?>">
    <?php echo $paragraph['text']; ?>
  </p>
<?php } ?>

Note that if you have short tags enabled in your php.ini, you can replace

<?php something(); ?>

with

<? something(); ?>

and

<?php echo something(); ?>

with

<?=something()?>

However, since one can't be sure of another server's config, it's wise to avoid using these short forms for scripts designed to be run on servers other than one's own.

[mburt]

Yeah, I knew the <? works, but why does everyone use <?php ?

[thetestingsite]

The <? only works if the short_open_tags is set to "On" in your php.ini file. <?php works always. That is why everyone uses it instead of the short tag (just to make sure that the code will run no matter what the ini settings are.

[tomyknoker]

So guys if I were to use CSS in my php pages, what would be the most correct and Web 2.0 accepted way? I know there are all the above ways but which is the technically the most correct?

[tomyknoker]

I also have noticed that people just start there pages with '<?php', Should all my php pages still look have these tags or is that incorrect?

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

<body>
</body>
</html>

[thetestingsite]

The above is correct HTML. The only reason to start with "<?php" is if you have some php code at the beginning of your html document. Otherwise, start with that and then (when you start your php code) open it with <?php and close it with ?>.

Hope this helps.