Theme coding conventions

Theme authors should take care to write clean, well structured code just like a coder for any other project. Doing so makes the code easier to read, understand and maintain. While different organizations have different conventions, it's usually best to follow the Drupal standards as this helps when collaborating or asking for help.

• Add 2 spaces for indents; rather than a tabbed indent
• Match the indentation of long opening and closing block HTML tags
• Distinguish between PHP and HTML indentation.

  Not this:
  

    ...
  <?php if ($header): ?>
  <div id="header">
    <?php print $header; ?>
  </div>
  <?php endif; ?>
  ...
   

  but this:
  

    ...
<?php if ($header): ?>
  <div id="header">
    <?php print $header; ?>
  </div>
<?php endif; ?>
  ...
   

  This makes it much easier to find matching opening and closing tags defined with different indentation.

• Prefer PHP in HTML to HTML in PHP in templates. For example,

  not this:
  

  <?php
if (!$page) {
  print "<h2><a href=\"$node_url\" title=\"$title\">$title</a></h2>";
}

if ($submitted) {
  print "<span class=\"submitted\">$submitted</span>";
}
?>

  but this:
  

  <?php if (!$page): ?>
  <h2><a href="<?php print $node_url ?>" title="<?php print $title ?>"><?php print $title ?></a></h2>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ($submitted): ?>
  <span class="submitted"><?php print $submitted ?></span>
<?php endif; ?>
   

  After all, PHP is a HTML embedded scripting language - and not the other way around.