"Pretty" code and PHP

I understand the concepts of \t and \n in most programming languages that have dynamic web content. What I use them for, as do most people, is shifting all the fancy HTML to make it all readable and "pretty" in v开发者_JAVA百科iew source. Currently, I am making a website that uses PHP include ("whateverfile.php") to construct the layout. You can probably tell where this is going.

How can I tab over a whole block of a PHP include so it aligns with the rest of the page's source?

If this question is worded incorrectly or doesn't make sense, English is my native language so I can't use any excuses.

You can do this by using a layer in your application that is taking care of the output, like a theme system. This will add the additional benefit to you that your code will be better separated into data-processing and output-processing.

A good example is given in the following article: When Flat PHP meets Symfony.

Next to that, there is another trick you can do: Install an output buffer and then run tidy on it to make it look just great: Tidying up your HTML with PHP 5.

On top of this you can always put tabs into your include's output, however you don't know always how much tabs this will need. There are some other tricks related to output buffering and intending html fragments when they return from includes, however this is very specific and most often of not much use. So the two articles linked above might give you two areas to look into which are of much more use for you in the end.

I think you can do it adding extra tabs in the included .php pages. But i wouldn't recommend that (obviously). Instead, use tools like firebug or chrome's inspect element to look at the code.