One frequent pattern that we encounter is iterating over an array using a foreach loop and creating HTML elements using the items from the array. The following approach does not work as one might hope:

<?php
$array = ["Alice", "Bob", "Charlie"];
foreach($array as $name): ?>
<p>$name</p>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Since we are in HTML mode and not PHP mode when using $name here, it will simply print $name, instead of the corresponding item from the array.

Because of this behavior, it’s important to remember to re-enter PHP mode before using PHP variables. This can be done using the <?php opening and ?> closing tags. If you are going to simply be printing the variable using echo, you can also use the echo shorthand opening tag (<?=).

With this, our example can be fixed like this:

<?php
$array = ["Alice", "Bob", "Charlie"];
foreach($array as $name): ?>
<p><?=$name?></p>
<?php endforeach; ?>