Question

I’m new to PHP and I am currently creating a PHP web application for an assignment at university. During the development I had realized that alot of elements in the user interface were being replicated in different sections of my application. For example I may have a hyperlink button in a Clients Page called ‘New Client’ (<a class="bigbutton" href=".......">New Client</a>) and another hyperlink button in a projects page called ‘New Project’ (<a "bigbutton" href=".......">New Project</a>).

Normally, I could just copy the html that constructs the buttons on the Clients Page and Change the content to suit the ‘New Project’ button in the projects page. Now If I was convert the hyperlink button to the tag, I would have to go to every instance of that particular button to replace the tag with a tag and if this button exists on so many pages, then updating would be time consuming.

That was just a simplistic example, then I have to think for other repeated elements across multiple pages such as breadcrumbs, list tables etc.

Is there any way to code in a way where I can actually reuse these UI elements that may be worthwhile to look at? Perhaps I could try to code each of these elements into classes, but right now I am not sure.

Any hints, pointers or resources would very helpful and appreciated.

Thanks guys.

Answer 1

You can make PHP functions which echo the HTML when called, optionally including some config stuff e.g.

function make_button($id, $label) {
    echo '<button id="'.$id.'">'.$label.'</button>';
}

This can be done for large chunks of the page, or just small bits. Some systems I’ve used have a html_writer class for this sort of thing, others use render methods where you pass an object in and it’ll pass back a string of HTML representing that object on a page.

Up to you which you prefer. Also good to make small functions which can be reused in larger functions like:

function make_buttons_from array($array) {
    foreach ($array as $id => $label) {
        $this->make_button($id, $label);
    }
}

The examples here echo their output, but you can also use string concatenation to assemble the pieces. Again, your call. There’s not really a right way.