Question

so I have this PHP function which returns html/js. But I find the method I am using is wrong and not efficient. Is there a better way?

Here is just a simplified version of the code.

function doSomething() {
$speed = 1000;
$duration = 500;
$start = false; // this is a boolean and doesn't work below (not sure why)

$output = '<div class="container">something</div>' . "\r\n";
$output .= '<script type="text/javascript">' . "\r\n";
$output .= 'jQuery(document).ready(function() {' . "\r\n";
$output .= 'jQuery(".container.").cycle({' . "\r\n";
$output .= 'speed : ' . $speed . ',' . "\r\n";
$output .= 'duration : ' . $duration . ',' . "\r\n";
$output .= 'start : ' . $start . "\r\n"; // this doesn't work I think is because of it becoming a string instead of a boolean here.
$output .= '})' . "\r\n";
$output .= '})' . "\r\n";
$output .= '</script> . "\r\n";
return $output;
}

So as you can see above a bunch of output and bunch of linebreaks and basically very hard to maintain and debug. In addition, the START variable isn’t working per the comment.

There has to be a better way. I thought about heredocs? But not sure…

Thanks for looking.

Answer 1

You could do something like this:

function doSomething() {        
    $cycleArguments = array(
        'speed'    => 1000,
        'duration' => 500,
        'start'    => false
    );

    $output = '<div class="container">something</div>' . "\r\n";
    $output .= '<script type="text/javascript">' . "\r\n";
    $output .= 'jQuery(document).ready(function() {' . "\r\n";
    $output .= 'jQuery(".container.").cycle(' . "\r\n";
    $output .= json_encode( $cycleArguments );
    $output .= ')' . "\r\n";
    $output .= '})' . "\r\n";
    $output .= '</script>' . "\r\n";
    return $output;
}

And with a combination of json_encode() and heredoc syntax:

function doSomething() {        
    $cycleArguments = array(
        'speed'    => 1000,
        'duration' => 500,
        'start'    => false
    );

    $jsonCycleArguments = json_encode( $cycleArguments );

    $output = <<<OUTPUT
    <div class="container">something</div>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    jQuery(document).ready(function() {
        jQuery(".container.").cycle( $jsonCycleArguments );
    });
    </script>
OUTPUT;
    return $output;
}

Another option, still, could be:

function doSomething() {        
    $cycleArguments = array(
        'speed'    => 1000,
        'duration' => 500,
        'start'    => false
    );

    $output = array(
        '<div class="container">something</div>',
        '<script type="text/javascript">',
        'jQuery(document).ready(function() {',
        '    jQuery(".container.").cycle(' . json_encode( $cycleArguments ) . ');',
        '});',
        '</script>'
    );

    return implode( "\r\n", $output );
}

etc…