> Do you have a perferred format?
I try to use heredoc as much as possibe.
http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php
If I have a bunch of different selects I will do all my variable declarations at the head, then build any heredoc to define each query.
This avoids a lot of the single quote/double quote issues and allows you to format a query the way you want to see it and in a way that is readable and maintanable.
Only output to the screen where you have to. Using this
tutorial as an example:
I have converted it to:
<?php
// set variable
$brush_price = 5;
?>
<table border="1" align="center">
<tr>
<th>Quantity</th>
<th>Price</th>
</tr>
<?php
for ( $counter = 10; $counter <= 100; $counter += 10) {
?>
<tr>
<td><?= $counter ?></td>
<td><?= $brush_price * $counter; ?></td>
</tr>
<?php
// close for loop
}
?>
</table>
So you can see that if you wanted/needed to edit the tags you don't have to escape anything and you are free to use double quotes or single quotes for you string parameter values because you are not working inside an echo.
This syntax is a lot easier to read/maintain in my opinion.
The last thing I like to do is have all of my data access be done through functions. That way you can validate any form data on the client side, then put it up to the server, escape it and pass it to a function. This gives you a pretty structured method for debugging. If it's in working with the DB, you go to your lib file and edit the function you are calling. It meas you can reuse your code and you don't have different files interacting differently with the DB than you anticipate.
Good Luck,
Shawn