Why have <?php and ?> on every line

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I’ve seen this convention pretty much everywhere, and, at times, it comes close to driving me nuts: 

<?php //The loop ?>
<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
    <?php the_content(); ?>
<?php endwhile; // end of the loop. ?>

Where the <?php and closing ?> are on every single line, even if there is no intervening HTML code.

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My question is: Why? Why include all these extra tags?

To me, it seems this convention adds a significant amount of clutter to code, is annoying to follow in the first place, and adds that many more places to accidentally leave out an opening or closing tag.

NOTE

This is code pulled from the Twenty-Twelve theme, the example given by WordPress.

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5 comments

  1. This is not recommended in any WordPress style guide, and I think it is a bad coding style. Beginners are using this style, maybe because it feels more like HTML …

    Unfortunately, the default themes are using this style way too often, so some beginners might think it is part of a code style.

    One disadvantage of this style is comment handling. Look closely at the following example and how it doesn’t do what the author might expect:

    <?php echo 'Important: '; // announcement ?>
<?php echo ' enter the word '; /* start ?>
<?php echo '<b>password</b>'; /* the end */ ?>

    Good luck debugging that. 🙂

    Rule: Switch between PHP and HTML context only if you have to create output in of both languages. Use regular line breaks in all other cases.

    Update, further thoughts: Every valid HTML file is a complete and valid PHP program. Yes, even if it does not contain a single line of actual PHP code.

    If you start from HTML and add small pieces of PHP step by step … you might end up with the style we’re discussing here. That’s where refactoring comes into the game: Once everything runs as expected, rewrite the code until it is as readable as possible, easy to maintain and to extend, without repeating parts.

    I guess some people are happy without this last step, and that’s why this won’t die soon.

  2. While I avoid this for PHP comments, I am an avid PHP opener/closer in template files. The alternative involves echoing HTML via PHP strings, which looks even worse in my opinion. As a primitive example:

    <!-- Example 1 -->
<ul>
    <?php
        foreach ( $list_items as $list_item ) {
            echo "<li><a href='" . $list_item->url . "'>" . $list_item->name . "</a></li>";
        }
    ?>
</ul>

<!-- Example 2 -->
<ul>
    <?php foreach ( $list_items as $list_item ) : ?>
        <li>
            <a href="<?php echo $list_item->url; ?>">
                <?php echo $list_item->name; ?>
            </a>
        </li>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

    Is example 2 more verbose? Perhaps? But easier to read and edit, in my opinion. You can imagine how ugly it can get for complex HTML.

    Also, just as a side note: using endforeach and endif when writing HTML between your PHP logic enhances readability a ton compared to }.

  3. This is about choice between seeing page as:

    • as completely PHP-generated entity
    • as HTML document template, powered by PHP template tags

    Different people tend to think about it differently. Note that functions rarely use this style, because they feel more like block of pure PHP. On other hand it’s not uncommon in templates because they are more spread across files and amount of pure HTML can be easily more than that of PHP in them.

    If you look at templating engines (Mustache, Twig, etc) – they look very much like this style except that their syntax tends to eliminate verbosity of plain PHP.

    PS I want to note that I am talking about sane embedding of PHP in HTML, not literally opening and ending tags on every line just for the sake of it.

  4. My question is: Why? Why include all these extra tags?

    The answer is pretty simple: Audience. When people (not programmers) grab a theme, then FTPing up their install, running the 5min setup and so on already feels like programming to them. When they then want to add or change a single line of whatever in their theme, then they maybe already figured out what HTML is. PHP still will be far out of their reach. So my guess is that the idea behind this is to allow easier adding or removing of elements without breaking everthing when they make a mistake.

    Note: This is not what I like, prefer or would recommend. It’s just what I think why this happens.

  5. I have found that some new programmers are trained this way. I’m following a 40 hour course on Lynda and the instructor is dropping PHP tags on every line, with the exception of function definitions. It’s probably to clearly draw lines between HTML and PHP, which probably helps new people understand where HTML ends and PHP begins. After that, its probably a habit. I was starting to get annoyed by it myself and decided to see if anyone else was complaining.