PHP opening and closing brackets - 2 ways to do it?

Some say it's for readability and good practice, but on a slightly similar note <?php doesn't always need ?> at the end unless it's within an HTML file. Pure PHP files (server-side scripts) do not need opening and closing tags, since in HTML, the tags are needed show where PHP starts and stops. However, there are more possible explanations which some might argue for.

Closing Brackets and PHP Tags

• PHP: brackets or no brackets
• Should You Close Your PHP Code Tags?
• Why do some scripts omit the closing php tag '?>'?

I didn't watch the video but it seems that he is incorporating php with html. For example you can have an index.php file with many lines of html but you also need to include some php for data retrieval from the database (there are many more reasons why).In that case you need to open and close php tags to write your php script in which can be done numerous time on the same file. Here is a more concrete example.

       <li>
                        <label for="Message">Message</label>
                        <textarea type="text" name="message" placeholder="Enter message" autocomplete="off" required="on"></textarea>

                        <?php include ("account.php");

                            $sql = "select * from registered_table where user = '$username' and pass = '$password'";
                            $result = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
                            if (mysql_num_rows($result) != 0) 
                            {
                                while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) 
                                {
                                    $chat_content = $row['chat_content'];
                                    print "<textarea value=$chat_content>$chat_content";
                                    print "</textarea>";
                                }
                            }
                        ?>
    </li>

Hey Chris!

So I think there's a few things to mention which might help answer your question:

Everything inside php tags <?php ?> has to be php code.

so your example of:

<?php if (isset($_GET["status"]) AND $_GET["status"] == "thanks") { Thanks for the email! I’ll be in touch shortly! } else { .... } ?> 

won't work because the conditional in the if statement ( Thanks for the email! I’ll be in touch shortly!) is not defined as a string (you'll need to surround with ""), nor is it echo'd to the page.

If you wanted to avoid opening and closing php tags and create the same statement in php, you could try

  <?php
 if (isset($_GET["status"]) AND $_GET["status"] == "thanks") { 
           echo " <p>Thanks for the email! I&rsquo;ll be in touch shortly!</p>";
 } else {
           echo "<p>Something else</p>";
 }
?>

I haven't tested this so it might not work straight away!

By opening and closing the php tags, you can write plain old HTML in conditional statements, functions, etc...

I think this is an advantage if you have lot's of html compared to php or maybe it runs better with your code indentation..

Maybe you're creating a string which involves concatenating (joining together) a large number of different variables and strings, which would be a lot cleaner in php:

<p>Hello <?php echo $name; ?> You are <?php echo $age; ?> years old and live at <?php echo $address; ?>.</p>

//vs

<?php
  echo "<p>Hello" . $name . " You are " . $age . " years old and live at " . $address .".</p>" ;
?>

Both have the same result, it's whatever you prefer/looks cleaner I guess!

Thank you to all who have submitted an answer. I seem to have found the answer to my question in the video following the one I was looking at, which is:

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/build-a-simple-php-application/listing-inventory-items/mingling-php-and-html

Basically, it DOES have to do with the fact that HTML was included inside the PHP, and they need to be maintained separate.

Thanks again.

An easy way to do if statements while in HTML around it is by doing it this way.

<?php if ($blah = '1') : ?>
     <h2>BLAH</h2>
<?php else : ?>
     <h1>Not BLAH</h1>
<?php endif; ?>