What is the advantage of using heredoc in PHP

Question

What is the advantage of using heredoc in PHP  and can you show an example

User · Accepted Answer

The heredoc syntax is much cleaner to me and it is really useful for multi-line strings and avoiding quoting issues. Back in the day I used to use them to construct SQL queries:

$sql = <<<SQL
select *
  from $tablename
 where id in [$order_ids_list]
   and product_name = "widgets"
SQL;

To me this has a lower probability of introducing a syntax error than using quotes:

$sql = "
select *
  from $tablename
 where id in [$order_ids_list]
   and product_name = \"widgets\"
";

Another point is to avoid escaping double quotes in your string:

$x = "The point of the \"argument" was to illustrate the use of here documents";

The problem with the above is the syntax error (the missing escaped quote) I just introduced as opposed to here document syntax:

$x = <<<EOF
The point of the "argument" was to illustrate the use of here documents
EOF;

It is a bit of style, but I use the following as rules for single, double and here documents for defining strings:

Single quotes are used when the string is a constant like 'no variables here'
Double quotes when I can put the string on a single line and require variable interpolation or an embedded single quote "Today is ${user}'s birthday"
Here documents for multi-line strings that require formatting and variable interpolation.

User · Answer

Heredoc s are a great alternative to quoted strings because of increased readability and maintainability  You don t have to escape quotes and  good  IDEs or text editors will use the proper syntax highlighting   A very common example  echoing out HTML from within PHP    html    lt  lt  lt HTML    lt div class  something  gt       lt ul class  mylist  gt         lt li gt  something lt  li gt         lt li gt  whatever lt  li gt         lt li gt  testing123 lt  li gt       lt  ul gt     lt  div gt  HTML      Sometime later echo  html    It is easy to read and easy to maintain   The alternative is echoing quoted strings  which end up containing escaped quotes and IDEs aren t going to highlight the syntax for that language  which leads to poor readability and more difficulty in maintenance   Updated answer for Your Common Sense  Of course you wouldn t want to see an SQL query highlighted as HTML  To use other languages  simply change the language in the syntax    sql    lt  lt  lt SQL        SELECT   FROM table SQL

User · Answer

I don t know if I would say heredoc is laziness  One can say that doing anything is laziness  as there are always more cumbersome ways to do anything   For example  in certain situations you may want to output text  with embedded variables without having to fetch from a file and run a template replace  Heredoc allows you to forgo having to escape quotes  so the text you see is the text you output  Clearly there are some negatives  for example  you can t indent your heredoc  and that can get frustrating in certain situation  especially if your a stickler for unified syntax  which I am

User · Answer

First of all  all the reasons are subjective  It s more like a matter of taste rather than a reason   Personally  I find heredoc quite useless and use it occasionally  most of the time when I need to get some HTML into a variable and don t want to bother with output buffering  to form an HTML email message for example   Formatting doesn t fit general indentation rules  but I don t think it s a big deal             some code at it s proper level         this- gt body    lt  lt  lt HERE heredoc text sticks to the left border but it seems OK to me  HERE          this- gt title    Feedback            and so on   As for the examples in the accepted answer  it is merely cheating  String examples  in fact  being more concise if one won t cheat on them   sql    SELECT   FROM  tablename         WHERE id in   order ids list          AND product name    widgets      x    The point of the  argument  was to illustrate the use of here documents

User · Answer

Some IDEs highlight the code in heredoc strings automatically - which makes using heredoc for XML or HTML visually appealing   I personally like it for longer parts of i e  XML since I don t have to care about quoting quote characters and can simply paste the XML

[php] What is the advantage of using heredoc in PHP?

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Examples related to heredoc