endforeach in loops?

Question

I use brackets when using foreach loops. What is endforeach for?

Answer 1

It's mainly so you can make start and end statements clearer when creating HTML in loops:

<table> <? while ($record = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs)): ?>     <? if (!$record['deleted']): ?>         <tr>         <? foreach ($display_fields as $field): ?>             <td><?= $record[$field] ?></td>         <? endforeach; ?>         <td>         <select name="action" onChange="submit">         <? foreach ($actions as $action): ?>             <option value="<?= $action ?>"><?= $action ?>         <? endforeach; ?>         </td>         </tr>     <? else: ?>          <tr><td colspan="<?= array_count($display_fields) ?>"><i>record <?= $record['id'] ?> has been deleted</i></td></tr>     <? endif; ?> <? endwhile; ?> </table> 

versus

<table> <? while ($record = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs)) { ?>     <? if (!$record['deleted']) { ?>         <tr>         <? foreach ($display_fields as $field) { ?>             <td><?= $record[$field] ?></td>         <? } ?>         <td>         <select name="action" onChange="submit">         <? foreach ($actions as $action) { ?>             <option value="<?= $action ?>"><?= action ?>         <? } ?>         </td>         </tr>     <? } else { ?>          <tr><td colspan="<?= array_count($display_fields) ?>"><i>record <?= $record['id'] ?> has been deleted</i></td></tr>     <? } ?> <? } ?> </table> 

Hopefully my example is sufficient to demonstrate that once you have several layers of nested loops, and the indenting is thrown off by all the PHP open/close tags and the contained HTML (and maybe you have to indent the HTML a certain way to get your page the way you want), the alternate syntax (endforeach) form can make things easier for your brain to parse. With the normal style, the closing } can be left on their own and make it hard to tell what they're actually closing.