Compressing php content in-file ?

[mike2010]

I've got a site that uses PHP and uses several template files combined to produce 1 web page .

The problem is a lot of these templates have php tags in them and these create line breaks when 'view source' of the web page.

example

%%aaa%%

%%bbb%%

%%ccc%%

there variables cause empty line breaks when their function is not needed.

A lot of those tags are in the html templates themself.

Any way to condense / compress all the gaps ?

the apache type compression doesn't work for these files...for example the stuff you could put in .htaccess

I need something more specific or in-file to close the gaps.

Like is there something (javascript or something else) I could place in the Header template and end in the Footer template that to help close the gaps / or compress ?

[incrediBILL]

If they aren't needed simply conditionally exclude them and they won't exist in the output.

[rocknbil]

White space shouldn't cause any problems, but did you try

%%aaa%%%%bbb%%%%ccc%%

or if that breaks it, try
%%aaa%% %%bbb%% %%ccc%%

The other thing you can try if it's coded "a certain way" is to add coding to draw out white space. That is, if your pages output like this,

$complete_page_content = some_function();
echo $complete_page_content;
exit;

... with all the output stored in a variable, you can do something like

$complete_page_content = some_function();
// Remove any white space more than a single space and substitute a single white space for it
$complete_page_content = preg_replace('/\s{2,}/',' ',$complete_page_content);
echo $complete_page_content;
exit;

But if your page outputs like this,

echo "<h1>$title</h1>\n";
echo "$content $something_else";

you'll have to take another approach.

[mike2010]

or if that breaks it, try
%%aaa%% %%bbb%% %%ccc%%

seemed to do the trick, thanks bud.


still would be cool if there was a way to wrap everything together automatically from Header to Footer. (as the templates sometimes change from pageview to pageview.)