What is the best way to insert HTML via PHP?

Question

Talking from a \'best practice\' point of view, what do you think is the best way to insert HTML using PHP. For the moment I use one of the following methods (mostly the lat

Answer 1

-1 for the typical hysterical ‘use [my favourite templating system] instead!’ posts. Every PHP post, even if the native PHP answer is a one-liner, always degenerates into this, just as every one-liner JavaScript question ends up full of ‘use [my favourite framework] instead!’. It's embarrassing.

Seriously, we know about separating business logic and presentation concerns. You can do that — or not do that — in any templating system, whether PHP, Smarty or something completely different. No templating system magically separates your concerns without a bunch of thinking.

(In fact a templating system that is too restrictive can end up with you having to write auxiliary code that is purely presentational, cluttering up your business logic with presentational concerns. This is not a win!)

To answer the question that was asked, the first example is OK, but very difficult to read due to the bad indentation. See monzee's example for a more readable way; you can use the : notation or {}s, whichever you prefer, but the important thing for readability is to keep your HTML and PHP as a single, ‘well-formed’ indented hierarchy.

And a final plea: remember htmlspecialchars(). Every time plain text needs to go in to a web page, this must be used, or it's XSS all over the floor. I know this question isn't directly related to that, but every time we post example code including < ?php echo($title) ?> or a framework equivalent without the escaping, we're encouraging the continuation of the security disaster area that most PHP apps have become.