[wp-hackers] Outputting Clean Well Indented and Readable X/HTML

Sat Mar 12 15:52:17 UTC 2011

Surely there is an elegant solution to this - is there not, say,
libraries for PHP to cleanup HTML output?

All the best,

Alex

On 7 March 2011 21:33, Jesus Lizama <beautifulcrimes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well put Eric. I couldn't of had said it better myself.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Eric Mann <eric at eam.me> wrote:
>
>> You're always going to run into that problem.  Some PHP scripts in
>> particular are written in a way that can break clean outlining of HTML.
>>  For
>> example:
>>
>> <?php
>> class Example {
>>    function this_is_a_function() {
>>        ... do something ...
>>    }
>>
>>    static function another_function() {
>>    ?>
>>    <div>Return HTML</div>
>>    <?php
>>    }
>> }
>> ?>
>>
>> Developers will write the PHP code so that it's presented in a clean,
>> readable format ... but the additional whitespace gets dumped in the
>> browser
>> wherever it's used.  For example:
>>
>> <html>
>> <head>
>> </head>
>> <body>
>>    <div id="header">
>>    </div>
>>    <div id="wrapper">
>>        <div id="content">
>>            <?php echo Example::another_function(); ?>
>>        </div>
>>    </div>
>> </body>
>> </html>
>>
>> Once you start making the PHP generate HTML markup, you lose any chance of
>> creating clean indenting without an additional tool.  Fortunately, just
>> about any in-browser developer tool will compensate for this.  Firebug for
>> Firefox and the built-in developer consoles for Chrome and Safari all
>> re-create the X/HTML tree from the markup.  They dump the whitespace and
>> indenting in the document and re-render everything in a clean, *foldable*
>>  format.
>>
>> So when you're developing and trying to troubleshoot issues, *please* use a
>> proper debugging tool.  Even the IE Developer Tools system is better than
>> trying to view-source and debug manually.  As far as best practices go,
>> it's
>> always better to keep HTML generation out of your PHP files, but once you
>> start adding multiple plug-ins to freely available themes to dynamic
>> JavaScript-generated elements you lose any control over the presentation of
>> the source's markup.  The browser can still read it, so use one of the
>> browser tools that can both read it and make it easy for you to read as
>> well.
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Andy Charrington-Wilden <
>> andycharrington at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > That's a great question. I too would like to hear how others deal with
>> > this.
>> >
>> > Andy
>> >
>> > Jealous Designs
>> > Website: jealousdesigns.co.uk
>> > Portfolio: jealousdesigns.co.uk/portfolio
>> > Phone: 07903030008
>> > Twitter: _a_n_d_y
>> > Skype: andycharrington
>> >
>> > Sent from my iPhone
>> >
>> > On 7 Mar 2011, at 20:34, Alex Andrews <awgandrews at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Dear all,
>> > >
>> > > Looking at the raw HTML for a site I'm working for, its really
>> > > horribly formatted. There is just so much unnecessary whitespace and
>> > > bad indenting. It makes it very difficult to work out what is going
>> > > on, and occasionally what is going wrong.
>> > >
>> > > How do other people cope with this? I know there are a few plugins,
>> > > but they don't seem to format HTML 5 well. HTML Tidy module for PHP is
>> > > unavailable on my server. How can one:
>> > >
>> > > 1. Use plugins to make HTML output from Wordpress look best.
>> > > 2. Have best practices for programming PHP in Wordpress to solve this
>> > problem?
>> > >
>> > > Thanks for all your help.
>> > >
>> > > All the best.
>> > >
>> > > Alex
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>
>
>
> --
> Jesus Lizama
> Developer/Designer
> Spifffy.com | ConquerLA.com | Bassdump.com
> Cell: (323)336-2953
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