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Asked: 2026-05-29T09:10:46+00:00

This is something that has always bothered me about PHP and I have never

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This is something that has always bothered me about PHP and I have never found an answer. Hopefully this example will provide enough information to understand my question, as I don’t know how to explain it thoroughly in words.

Here is some PHP inside of HTML, in a .php file. This type of things occurs pretty often:

<html>
    <head>
        <!-- whatever -->
    </head>
    <body>
        <section id="content">
            <ul class="errors">
            <?php
            foreach ($errors as $error)
            {
            ?>
                <li><?= $error ?></li>
            <?php
            }
            ?>

I have disregarded the end tags of the HTML and used <?= shortcuts to avoid any unnecessary text.

Now, here is what expect in the HTML output (i.e., right-click -> view source):

<html>
    <head>
        <!-- whatever -->
    </head>
    <body>
        <section id="content">
            <ul class="errors">
                <li>Example Error</li>

However, here is the actual result:

<html>
    <head>
        <!-- whatever -->
    </head>
    <body>
        <section id="content">
            <ul class="errors">
                             <li>Example Error</li>

Why? Because the foreach loop from PHP is indented 3 tabs in, so the <li> it is generating gets an ADDITIONAL 3 tabs. The solution I have been using? Here:

<html>
    <head>
        <!-- whatever -->
    </head>
    <body>
        <section id="content">
            <ul class="errors">
<?php
foreach ($errors as $error)
{
?>
                <li><?= $error ?></li>
<?php
}
?>

Sure, this works – but man is it ugly! It seems like I have two options: make my HTML output ugly and my code readable OR make my HTML readable and my code ugly. Why can’t I have both? Is there no other way?

The best thing to do, I guess, is make the code readable and the output ugly. Who checks the source code anyway? I know this is probably the most popular reaction. Ugly HTML source code just bothers me, and I wish there was a way around it without sacrificing PHP code readability.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    php code doesn’t generate any indents on the page. What’s generating the indent is the indent in the 

    <li> line</li>

    What you can do is: use echo to output it

     <?php
 foreach ($errors as $error)
        {

        echo "<li>$error</li>";

        }
        ?>

    Or you could do:

      <?php
 foreach ($errors as $error)
    {?>

 <li><?=$error?></li> /(indent it in the begining as much as you want in the markup)

    <?}
    ?>

    Although, imo, you needn’t worry about how the markup looks. Its not important. Indents have no effect on the output

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