Re: php style guides

Jochem Maas <jochem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Wed, 12 Jan 2005 15:08:12 +0100

Tim Burgan wrote:
Hi everyone,

What 'rules' do you follow about styling/formatting your PHP code? Do 
you follow a guide that is available online?

I generally have my own preference for formatting like

if ( condition )
{
   statements;
}

which personally I think is ugly and a waste of space ;-)

(actually I used to do it like that but the better I got at programming 
the more I found myself trying to condense my code - mostly so that I 
could fit more of it on screen.)

currently I reserve the above CS for functions and classes.

e.g.

myCoolFunc( $arg1, $arg2 = 'default' )
{
	// do something cool!
}

for all conditional statements and loops, as opposed to

if (condition) {
   statements;
}

this is my (exact) preference for block statements.

its all very personal this!

But what I'm really wanting to get everyones thoughts about is in regard 
to combining PHP with HTML.

I used to do:

<?php
  echo "blah";
  ?><h1>test</h1><?php
  echo "blah";
?>

which very quickly gets completely unreadable when the complexity starts 
piling up.

but just tried

<?php
  echo 'blah';
  echo '<h1>test</h1>';
  echo 'blah';
?>

much easier to read, but what about:

<?php
	echo 'blahh1>test</h1>blah';
?>

or (where the literal strings would normally be vars):

<?php
	echo 'blah','h1>test</h1>','blah';
?>

or (the semi-colon can be dropped here):

<?= 'blahh1>test</h1>blah'; ?>

the consensus is (AFAIKT) that the less you break in and out of PHP

the more legible your code is likely to be. In the same vein it is often 
suggested to first process/gather you data and then output everything 
after your script is done doing its thing, rather than echoing as you go.

there is also the HEREDOC style of echoing output (actually its a method 
of string delimitation) e.g.:

<?

echo <<< THE_END
yadda yadda yadda $myArr['key1'][$key2]
$jumpup, $howhigh
THE_END;

?>

read more here (or google PHP+HEREDOC):
http://nl2.php.net/types.string

which I find it's much easier to read to code.

What do other people do and for what reason? What are the 
advantages/disadvantages to doing it certain ways?

I always advise that readability/maintainability is king - speed is 
hardly ever an issue  on an average php site, and when speed becomes 
critical optimizing echo statements is probably not where you want to 
start (creating objects and calling functions is way,way heavier).

so in short: do what you find to be the easiest to read back in 6 months 
time!

Thanks for your time.

Tim

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