Question(s) for PHP Pros

Alice 888 · #1 (**permalink**) 02-03-2007, 07:40 AM

I'm taking a PHP + mySQL class at school, and I wanted to ask some regular php coders out there about how you put php into a page.

I know a small amount of php, enough to make just a simple database driven site. Every tutorial that I've learned from just slaps the php in where it needs to be used. An example would be this:
CODE
<?php

$date = date("F d, Y H:i:s a");

?>

<!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><title>Comm393: </title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
</head>
<body>

<h1>Hello World</h1>
<center><?php echo("$date") ?></center>
</body></html>
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bj · #2 (**permalink**) 02-03-2007, 09:06 AM

A warning-- yes, certain calls can be placed where you need them, but putting certain calls in that will render BEFORE the doctype in a document that is meant to be served as xhtml will have all sorts of unintended consequences since it will kick all the browsers into quirks mode, which could, if your document is indeed an xhtml 1.0 transitional document, break rendering in IE for almost certain, and possibly break it in other browsers as well.

speed · #3 (**permalink**) 02-03-2007, 12:02 PM

Just to add to bjs answer, in your example the PHP code is fine where it is however the white space between the ?> tag and the DOCTYPE will be sent to the browser and so will put IE into quirks mode.

You do need to watch where white space occurs.

DaveSawers · #4 (**permalink**) 02-04-2007, 10:11 AM

So, yes. Just "slap it in where it's needed".

There's no need to code the whole page in PHP. In fact, using PHP unecessarily can be a real pain at the design stage where you might still need to move things around.

icb01co2 · #5 (**permalink**) 02-14-2007, 05:14 PM

Erm, no dont just slap it where its needed!!

I believe that your question was only related to whether you can add your php before the DOCTYPE, which has been answered well here. Although, you have also touched upon another issue.

Think about when your small site becomes a larger project, eventually having your html and php mixed together will be a nightmare to debug. Your goal should be to find away to seperate your logic from your content. If your looking for a better way to structure your programs try searching on things like: Smarty templating engine, MVC architecture and OOP php.

If you get your head around these subjects making larger scale developments will become a whole lot easier.

Chris.