Question

I would like to apply a css class (.error) to every echoed instance of $error. It seems like an easy thing to do, I’m just not sure about the syntax.

<?php // rclogin.php
    include_once 'rcheader.php';
    echo "<h3>Member Log in</h3>";
    $error = $user = $pass = "";

    if (isset($_POST['user']))
    {
        $user = sanitizeString($_POST['user']);
        $pass = sanitizeString($_POST['pass']);

        if ($user == "" || $pass == "")
        {
            $error = "Not all fields were entered<br />";
        }
        else
        {
            $query = "SELECT user,pass FROM rcmembers
                      WHERE user='$user' AND pass='$pass'";

            if (mysql_num_rows(queryMysql($query)) == 0)
            {
                $error = "Username/Password invalid<br />";
            }

Answer 1

First of all – do not put into $error a whole HTML. It’s a bad habbit in my opinion. Place there just an error info:

$error = 'Not all fields were entered';

And then in HTML during printing error info:

if ( $error ) {
    echo '<span class="error">' . $error . '</span><br/>';
}

As you can see – if you pass HTML in variables, you have less opportunities to do everything you want.