Running PHP inside of PHP?

Question

I am still learning and I found that I can't run PHP within PHP, after reading into it makes sense why you cannot do it (D'oh!), what I am struggling to find is the correct way to do this.

I have two buttons which link to different modals, if I do not use them within a IF Statement they work as expected as soon as I add to the IF Statement it breaks the page. (obviously because I am trying to run php within php)

What I'm trying to get working is to show a different button depending on the result of a column called "status" in the MySQL table, if it equals 1 it will show the edit button if anything else it will show a check-out button. I need to pass the <?php echo $fetch['id']?> to the data-target I'm not sure how to go about that.

 <?php
 $status_code = $fetch["status"];
 if("$status_code" == "1")
 { echo '<button type="button" class="button-7" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#update_modal<? 
 php echo $fetch['id']?>"><span class="glyphicon glyphicon-plus"></span>edit</button>';
 } else
 { echo '<button type="button" class="button-7" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#checkout_modal<? 
 php echo $fetch['id']?>"></span>Check-Out</button>';
 } ?>

Any help is much appreciated.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 06 '22 at 23:06

You just need simple concatenation with the . (dot) operator.

E.g.

echo '<button type="button" class="button-7" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#update_modal'.$fetch['id'].'"><span class="glyphicon glyphicon-plus"></span>edit</button>';

...etc.

This is used to join any two string values (whether hard-coded literals or variables) together. What's happening here is your code is building a string from several components and then echoing it.

Documentation: https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.string.php

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 07 '22 at 01:02

You don't need to run PHP inside PHP.

You may use a comma (or a dot):

<?php
 if ($status_code == "1") {
    echo '<button type="button" class="button-7" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#update_modal<'
        , $fetch['id']
        , '"><span class="glyphicon glyphicon-plus"></span>edit</button>';
 } else {
    echo '<button type="button" class="button-7" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#checkout_modal'
        , $fetch['id']
        , '">Check-Out</button>';
 }

Or using short tags:

<?php if ($status_code === '1') : ?>
    <button type="button" class="button-7" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#update_modal<?= $fetch['id'] ?>">
    <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-plus"></span>edit</button>'
<?php else: ?>
    <button type="button" class="button-7" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#checkout_modal<?= $fetch['id'] ?>">Check-Out</button>'
<?php endif; ?>

You can have conditions (and other expressions) in short tags:

<button
    type="button"
    class="button-7"
    data-toggle="modal"
    data-target="#<?=
        $status_code === '1'
            ? 'update_modal'
            : 'checkout_modal'
    ?><?= $fetch['id'] ?>">
    <?php if ($status_code === '1') : ?>
        <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-plus"></span>edit
    <?php else: ?>
        Check-Out
    <?php endif; ?>
</button>

And concatenate strings with dots:

<?php
$dataTargetPrefix =
    $status_code === '1'
        ? 'update_modal'
        : 'checkout_modal';
?>
<button
    type="button"
    class="button-7"
    data-toggle="modal"
    data-target="#<?= $dataTargetPrefix . $fetch['id'] ?>">
    <?php if ($status_code === '1') : ?>
        <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-plus"></span>edit
    <?php else: ?>
        Check-Out
    <?php endif; ?>
</button>

Running PHP inside of PHP?

2 Answers2