Wordpress - dealing with large HTML output via plugin code
@Byran M. I tend to use two constructs I don't often see other WordPress developers using often, which surprises me, but I like them a lot.
1.) Heredocs
You can store large blocks of text as heredocs string that might look like this so I can store worrying about mixing single and double quotes:
$html=<<<HTML
<input type="{$type}" size="{$size}" id="{$id}" class="{$class}" value="{$value}" />
HTML;
Note that the variables might be passed to a function as an array and then extract()ed or you could assign them in other ways. Also note that I use the braces not because they are always required but they make the code easier to read. (Of course with functions like the_content() being materially different from get_the_content() WordPress doesn't always make this style of coding easy.)
What's more, although it may not be relevant to you is if I use heredoc names like HTML, SQL, etc. then my IDE PhpStorm does syntax injection and will give me autocomplete and syntax coloring within the heredoc.
2.) String Concatenation using an Array
The other idiom I like to use is to collect the content into an array and then implode() the array. Although I've never benchmarked this so it could be less helpful than I assume I do know that repeated string concatenation is a killer as strings get larger (if anyone knows why this approach isn't any better or if you know a better approach I'd love to hear feedback):
function my_get_form_and_fields($input_items) {
$html = array();
$html[] = '<form name="my_form" method="get">';
foreach($input_items as $input_item) {
extract($input_item);
$html=<<<HTML
<input type="{$type}" size="{$size}" id="{$id}" class="{$class}" value="{$value}" />
HTML;
$html[] = '</form>';
return implode("\n",$html);
}
Checkout this function for PHP:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.ob-start.php
You can buffer an included file which would just contain html code in it, into a php variable. This will make it cleaner to maintain.
So you end up with something like this:
ob_start();
include('path/to/my/html/file.php');
$includedhtml = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
Then you can just return $includedhtml where you need it and it keeps your html content seperate from having to echo it all out inside of php strings.
I haven't actually used this framework, but the template model it offers will probably appeal. You might want to take a look at how the author set that up.
https://github.com/Emerson/Sanity-Wordpress-Plugin-Framework
Templates ========= Whenever possible, we should separate PHP from HTML. Within Wordpress, you'll see the two mixed together without apprehension. While this is often an "easy way" of doing things, it is almost never the "right way." Instead, we should segregate the two, thus keeping our logic pure and our views dumb. For this purpose we have the $this->render('my-template') method. A few examples:
// From within a method in our controller
$this->data['message'] = 'Pass this on to the template please';
$this->render('my-template');
// Meanwhile, in the /plugin/views/my-template.php file
<h2>The Separation of Logic and Views</h2>
<p><?php echo $this->data['message'];?></p>