What is the correct way to output html from a php function?

Question

I have a php function with a loop.
I want my function to loop through an array and output something along the lines of the following to any of my pages calling it -

<div class="style">html from php result 1</div>
<div class="style">html from php result 2</div>
<div class="style">html from php result 3</div>

Currently my loop ends with this:

echo "<div class=\"style\">".$result."</div>"

This feels very awkward ... especially having to escape the quote marks.

I feel like this isn't the right way but I'm struggling to find others.
What is the correct way to output html from a php function?

Answer 1

not really what I'm asking.

I want to know what best practice amongst web developers is.

For example in C# a developer might tell me to use StringBuilder for a lot of strings or String.Format when there's several variables to go in to a single string.

Does php have anything better than concatenating html together with dots? I know about join() but it only takes 2 inputs. Would best practice be sticking everything in to an array and using join() ?

Answer 2

That's better than what I'm currently doing, definitely. I didn't realise you could do that with printf().

I'm most curious about common practice ... if possible, i'd like to find out from someone who works as a php developer about expectations.

Answer 3

I've now done some reading and discovered that in my question ...
I'm doing it wrong.

echo "<div class='echoslide'>$imageresult</div>";

Tonight I (re?)learnt php echo doesn't require concatenate operators to include variables in a string. I can then get rid of the escape marks by using single quotes.

Thanks for showing me the print functions Mohamed. I'll keep them in mind.

Answer 4

note to self
also read up on file_get_contents();