Refactoring PHP

Here are some common opportunities for improving the maintainability of code through refactoring that I find when reading code.

1. Replace Duplicated HTML with Iterating Over an Array

   The purpose of most PHP code is to output HTML that the web server will send back to the browser. If you have a table that has 20 rows, and all those rows have the same structure, but the data in each row is different, you could write it 2 ways:

   1. Duplicated HTML

           <tr>
             <td align="center" valign="middle" class="messageFormTd3">2010-05-04</td>
             <td align="center" valign="middle" class="messageFormTd3">Copenhagen</td>
             <td align="left" valign="top" class="messageFormTd3">City Hall</td>
             <td align="center" class="messageFormTd5">10:15</td>
           </tr>
           <tr>
             <td align="center" valign="middle" class="messageFormTd3">2010-05-02</td>
             <td align="center" valign="middle" class="messageFormTd3">Zagreb</td>
             <td align="left" valign="top" class="messageFormTd3">Main Square</td>
             <td align="center" class="messageFormTd5">12:30</td>
           </tr>

   2. Iterating Over an Array

                 <?php foreach (array(
                   array('date' => '2010-05-04', 'city' => 'Copenhagen', 'venue' => 'City Hall', 'time' => '10:15'),
                   array('date' => '2010-05-02', 'city' => 'Zagreb', 'venue' => 'Main Square', 'time' => '12:30'),
                 ) as $event) { ?>
                 <tr>
                   <td align="center" valign="middle" class="messageFormTd3"><?php echo $event['date'] ?></td>
                   <td align="center" valign="middle" class="messageFormTd3"><?php echo $event['city'] ?></td>
                   <td align="left" valign="top" class="messageFormTd3"><?php echo $event['venue'] ?></td>
                   <td align="center" class="messageFormTd5"><?php echo $event['time'] ?></td>
                 </tr>
                 <?php } ?>