Question

I have a chunk of HTML code (with some PHP vars echoed inside of it) that I need show on multiple times (inside a loop) AND on multiple pages.

So how to keep it DRY?

My ideas admittedly were not brilliant:

• Putting it in a separate file and including – but then I’ll do an include inside a loop and it showed like bad practice.

• Putting it in a function – but then I have to make variables global plus it just doesn’t look to me like functions are meant for such usage.

Is there a better way? Is this where maybe OOP has a solution? (I run php 5.3)

Answer 1

Use templates.

Just write your loop inside of the template, as well as all other presentation code.

<h1>Some list</h1>
<ul>
<?php foreach($data as $row): ?>
  <li><?=$row['name']?> whatever your block code goes here</li>
<?php endforeach ?>
</ul>

so, no need to include anything at all.

For the multiple pages you may wish to make a helper function, called from the template.