PHP Echo a large block of text

Question

Im new to PHP and I can't figure out what the rules are for using the echo function. For example, if I need to echo a large block of css/js, do I need to add echo to each line of text or is there a way to echo a large block of code with a single echo?

When I try to echo a big block of code like this one, I get an error:

if (is_single()) {
echo '<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://jotform.com/css/styles/form.css"/><style type="text/css"> 
.form-label{
width:150px !important;
}
.form-label-left{
width:150px !important;
}
.form-line{
padding:10px;
}
.form-label-right{
width:150px !important;
}
body, html{
margin:0;
padding:0;
background:false;
}

.form-all{
margin:0px auto;
padding-top:20px;
width:650px !important;
color:Black;
font-family:Verdana;
font-size:12px;
}
</style> 

<link href="http://jotform.com/css/calendarview.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/protoplus.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/protoplus-ui.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/jotform.js?v3" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/location.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/calendarview.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script type="text/javascript"> 

JotForm.init(function(){
$('input_6').hint('ex: myname@example.com');
});
</script>';
}else {

}

Is there a better way to echo large blocks of code without a lot of work (adding echo to each line for example)?

Answer 1

Heredoc syntax can be very useful:

// start the string with 3 <'s and then a word
// it doesn't have to be any particular string or length
// but it's common to make it in all caps.
echo <<< EOT
    in here is your string
    it has the same variable substitution rules
    as a double quoted string.
    when you end it, put the indicator word at the
    start of the line (no spaces before it)
    and put a semicolon after it
EOT;

Answer 2

One option is to get out of the php block and just write HTML.

With your code, after the opening curly brace of your if statement, end the PHP:

if (is_single()) { ?>

Then remove the echo ' and the ';

After all your html and css, before the closing }, write:

<? } else {

If the text you want to write to the page is dynamic, it gets a little trickier, but for now this should work fine.

Answer 3

Check out heredoc. Example:

echo <<<EOD
Example of string
spanning multiple lines
using heredoc syntax.
EOD;

echo <<<"FOOBAR"
Hello World!
FOOBAR;

The is also nowdoc but no parsing is done inside the block.

echo <<<'EOD'
Example of string
spanning multiple lines
using nowdoc syntax.
EOD;

Answer 4

Echoing text that contains line breaks is fine, and there's no limit on the amount of text or lines you can echo at once (save for available memory).

The error in your code is caused by the unescaped single quotes which appear in the string.

See this line:

$('input_6').hint('ex: myname@example.com');

You'd need to escape those single quotes in a PHP string whether it's a single line or not.

There is another good way to echo large strings, though, and that's to close the PHP block and open it again later:

if (is_single()) {
  ?>
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://jotform.com/css/styles/form.css"/><style type="text/css"> 
.form-label{
width:150px !important;
}
.form-label-left{
width:150px !important;
}
.form-line{
padding:10px;
}
.form-label-right{
width:150px !important;
}
body, html{
margin:0;
padding:0;
background:false;
}

.form-all{
margin:0px auto;
padding-top:20px;
width:650px !important;
color:Black;
font-family:Verdana;
font-size:12px;
}
</style> 

<link href="http://jotform.com/css/calendarview.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/protoplus.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/protoplus-ui.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/jotform.js?v3" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/location.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="http://jotform.com/js/calendarview.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script type="text/javascript"> 

JotForm.init(function(){
$('input_6').hint('ex: myname@example.com');
});
</script>
  <?php
}else {

}

Or another alternative, which is probably better for readability, is to put all that static HTML into another page and include() it.

Answer 5

Man, PHP is not perl!
PHP can just escape from HTML :) http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.basic-syntax.phpmode.php

if (is_single()) {
//now we just close PHP tag
?>
</style> 
<script> 
<blah blah blah>
<?php
//open it back. here is your PHP again. easy!
}
?>

I wonder why such many people stuck to ugly heredoc.

Answer 6

Your problem is actually caused by:

$('input_6').hint('ex: myname@example.com');

You need to escape the single quotes to be \'

However: Using a Heredoc is a much better idea, as it will be much cleaner overall.

Answer 7

To expand on @hookedonwinter's answer, here's an alternate (cleaner, in my opinion) syntax:

<?php if (is_single()): ?>
    <p>This will be shown if "is_single()" is true.</p>
<?php else: ?>
    <p>This will be shown otherwise.</p>
<?php endif; ?>

Answer 8

Just break out where you need to.

<html>
(html code)
<?php
(php code)
?>
(html code)
</html>

Do not use shortened-form. <? conflicts with XML and is disabled by default on most servers.

Answer 9

I prefer to concatenate multiple Strings together. This works either for echo AND for variables. Also some IDEs auto-initialize new lines if you hit enter. This Syntax also generate small output because there are much less whitespaces in the strings.

echo ''
    .'one {'
    .'    color: red;'
    .'}'
    ;

$foo = ''
    .'<h1>' . $bar . '</h1>'  // insert value of bar
    .$bar                     // insert value of bar again
    ."<p>$bar</p>"            // and again
    ."<p>You can also use Double-Quoted \t Strings for single lines. \n To use Escape Sequences.</p>"
    // also you can insert comments in middle, which aren't in the string.
    .'<p>Or to insert Escape Sequences in middle '."\n".' of a string</p>'
    ;

Normally i start with an empty string and then append bit by bit to it:

$foo = '';

$foo .= 'function sayHello()'
    .'    alert( "Hello" );'
    ."}\n";

$foo .= 'function sum( a , b )'
    .'{'
    .'    return a + b ;'
    ."}\n";

(Please stop Posts like "uh. You answer to an five jears old Question." Why not? There are much people searching for an answer. And what's wrong to use five year old ideas? If they don't find "their" solution they would open a new Question. Then the first five answers are only "use the search function before you ask!" So. I give you another solution to solve problems like this.)

Answer 10

$num = 5;
$location = 'tree';

$format = 'There are %d monkeys in the %s';
echo sprintf($format, $num, $location);

Answer 11

You can achieve that by printing your string like:

<?php $string ='here is your string.'; print_r($string); ?>