Question

The following code gives syntax error because of IF. How can I fix this without removing IF statement?

<?php
    for ($i = 1; $i < 6; $i++){ 
        $data .= 'h'.$i.'{'.    
            if ( !empty ($size) ) {.
            'font-size: ' .$size. ';'.
            }.
        '}';
    }
?>

Error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'if' (T_IF)

Answer 1

You cannot use an if statement within an expression, because it is syntactically wrong and the statement itself doesn’t return a value. Use the ternary ?: operator which can be nested there:

$data .= 'h' . $i . '{' . (!empty($size) ? "font-size: $size" : '') . '}';

You could also benefit from the usage of double quotes to interpolate the variables instead of getting messy with the . operator.