TEXT & VARIABLE OUTPUT IN PHP

 foo [1] => bar )
var_dump($hello); // array(2) { [0]=> string(3) "foo" [1]=> string(3) "bar" }

Now for the quick recap – There are several ways for us to output a variable or text in PHP:

• echo – Simply outputs a string.
• print – This one is kind of baffling. It outputs a string as well, but will return a value of “1”.
• printf – Outputs a formatted string.
• print_r – Output nice human-readable information on a given variable.
• var_dump – Simply dumps whatever is in a given variable (unformatted).

Just what purpose do these serve? We will be using these exact functions to weave variables into HTML in the sections below. So just keep them in mind for the time being.

SINGLE & DOUBLE QUOTES

For this next piece of trivial, some other tutorials may state “you may define strings in both single and double quotes”. Yes, that is true, but there is also a difference between these two.

• Single quotes will just output whatever you enter inside.
• If you throw a variable into a double quotes string, it will automatically be concatenated.

So there you go, hope you have learned a new lazy trick with this.

PHP FILE, NOT HTML

If you want to display PHP variables in an HTML page, the very first thing to do is to create a PHP file with HTML code inside.

  
    
This is a PHP file without a single line of PHP code.
    
What's more - This is a HTML page!
  

Yes, this may be confusing to some of you at first – Aren’t we supposed to put HTML code in an HTML file? Well, there are no rules saying that we must… and remember that HTML is essentially just plain text? What we are doing here is exactly outputting text in HTML format with PHP. That’s all.

PHP IN HTML

So far so good? Now, remember that pair of  and ?> that we normally use in PHP? Those are not for show, and another quick recap.

•  marks the start of the PHP script.
• ?> marks the end of the PHP script.

With that, we can weave PHP code into the HTML as such:

  
    
This is a PHP file.
    
    $hello";
    ?>
    
    
What's more - This is a HTML page!
  

Take note that there are no limits to how many times we can weave in-and-out of PHP/HTML within a page. For example, we can do some PHP processing at the top, switch to output the HTML, then weave more PHP in the middle of the HTML page – Will go through more of such examples below. 

SHORT TAGS

Now that you have learned the secret of weaving, here is another “lazy goodie” for you – Short tags. Instead of defining full PHP tags and doing echo, we can simply use =$VAR?> to weave a variable into the HTML.

This is a =$hello?> PHP file.
    
What's more - This is a =$foo?> HTML page!
  

PHP VARIABLES IN HTML TABLE

Hello
        
=$hello?>
      
Foo
        
=$foo?>
      

PHP VARIABLES IN HTML FORM

This part will only show after the form is submitted.
      

      
  

ARRAY & LOOP

 "John Doe",
  "email" => "[email protected]",
  "gender" => "Male"
];
// INTO HTML
?>


  
    $value) {
        printf("", $key, $value);
      }
    ?>
%s
%s

HTML TEMPLATE

Yep, just-in-case you have not realized yet – We can put the variables anywhere we want within the page. That includes the head section, where we can use it to create an HTML template system.

Hello world!
Foo bar is great!

THE SUMMARY 

• The basic PHP output functions are – echo, print, printf, print_r, and var_dump.
• Single quote strings will just output whatever you put in.
• Double quote strings will automatically concatenate variables that you put in.
• We use a pair of  and ?> to weave in-and-out of PHP.
• We can use short tags =$VAR?> to quickly output a variable.
• PHP variables can really be “weaved” into any part of the HTML.
• It is a good idea to quickly loop through an array to create a table or list.

DO NOT MIX PHP AND HTML!

So says some of the programming trolls, and don’t listen to them. Here is the million dollar question – Would you rather use a single for loop or copy-paste the same piece of code a hundred times? I think a more proper way to put the PHP-HTML marriage situation is – Don’t stash all the functions and libraries into a single script.

You need to learn how to better organize your scripts, and the model-view-controller (MVC) concept is one of those. Do follow up on my other guide if you are interested:

4 Steps Simple PHP MVC Example (What the Heck is MVC!?)

SOURCE CODE DOWNLOAD

Click here to download all the example code, I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.
 

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