How to write this loop prettier?

Question

I've just read this topic highlight search keywords on hover and actually I use pretty the same structure, but it looks awful. So can you give me an advice, how to write this loop prettier in one php file, I mean php and html at the same time?

<table class="result">
    <?php while ($row= mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
    $cQuote =  highlightWords(htmlspecialchars($row['cQuotes']), $search_result);
    ?>
    <tr>
    <td style="text-align:right; font-size:15px;"><?php h($row['cArabic']); ?></td>
    <td style="font-size:16px;"><?php echo $cQuote; ?></td>
    <td style="font-size:12px;"><?php h($row['vAuthor']); ?></td>
    <td style="font-size:12px; font-style:italic; text-align:right;"><?php h($row['vReference']); ?></td>
    </tr>
<?php } ?>

Answer 1

Personally I would keep the HTML section for printing out values only, not doing database connections, calling functions, and so on. Something like this:

<?php
$rows = array();
while ($row= mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC))
{
    $row['cquote_hi'] = highlightWords(htmlspecialchars($row['cQuotes']), $search_result);
    $rows[] = $row;
}
?>

<table class="result">
    <?php foreach ( $rows as $row ) : ?>
    <tr>
    <td style="text-align:right; font-size:15px;"><?php h($row['cArabic']); ?></td>
    <td style="font-size:16px;"><?php echo $row['cquote_hi']; ?></td>
    <td style="font-size:12px;"><?php h($row['vAuthor']); ?></td>
    <td style="font-size:12px; font-style:italic; text-align:right;"><?php h($row['vReference']); ?></td>
    </tr>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
</table>

If your server setup allows it, you can echo variables with short tags: <?=$row['cquote_hi']?>

I don't know what the h() function is doing but you could perhaps call it for each variable in the original while loop, then just echo the variables.