I am fetching a list of users from the database table :
userid username created
1 xyz 1384875794
Where created is the UNIX time [using PHP time()] at which the user was created.
But in the browser while printing these users , i will be converting the php time into a readable format [eg. Nov 19 2013] using javascript .
Here comes my question :
Suppose if the javascript function format_time(time) converts the time into readable format .
Which of the following two ways is preferred
First way :
Use javascript inline like this
<table>
<?php foreach($users as $user) {
<tr>
<td> <?php echo $user['name']; ?> </td>
<td> <script>format_time(<?php echo $user['created']; ?>)</script></td>
</tr>
<?php } ?>
</table>
Here the format_time() will use document.write() to print the formatted time.
Second way :
Use javascript after DOM load
I can even remove above ajax request by converting the php variable $users to a javascript by JSON encode/decode and repeat the above second step.
In this case I suggest you process the issue format of time in php, then output the processed result:
<table>
<?php foreach($users as $user) {
// format_time is a function to format time in php script
$created = format_time($user['created']);?>
<tr>
<td> <?php echo $user['name']; ?> </td>
<td> <script>format_time(<?php echo $created; ?>)</script></td>
</tr>
<?php } ?>
</table>
If you just want to output the $users object then use it in javascript, you can do it like below:
<?php
$users = array(array('name' => 'srain'));
echo "<script type='text/javascript'>var users = " . json_encode($users) . ";</script>";
?>
Then you can access users in javascript.