Displaying recent buyers' feedback on games

I have the following code made to output the following:

Is there an efficient way to simplify it and not have to repeat the same if(!empty($st[$i]['feedback'])) { code block 2 times just to seperate 2 feedback lines with a echo '
';?

$urlname,":platform"=>$platform));

echo '';

//Output the first 2 Feedback on line 1;
for($i = 0; $i 
            
                ';
                    echo $st[$i]['feedback'].'
                
            
        ';

    }

}

echo '';

//Output the last 2 Feedback on line 2;
for($i = 2; $i 
            
                ';
                    echo $st[$i]['feedback'].'
                
            
        ';

    }

}

echo '';

?>

Simple Approach

The simplest thing to remove copy-pasted code is to extract the exact duplication to its own function. Any variables that are needed can be passed on:

function printFeedback($st, $i) {
    if(!empty($st[$i]['feedback'])) {

        echo '
        
            
                ';
                    echo $st[$i]['feedback'].'
                
            
        ';

    }
}

Then use it:

$st = fetch([...]);

echo '';

//Output the first 2 Feedback on line 1;
for($i = 0; $i ';

//Output the last 2 Feedback on line 2;
for($i = 2; $i ';

Now the duplication is gone.

Further Improvements

Now, the simple approach did remove the direct duplication, but we still have two similar for loops, and we have a function that accepts arguments that do not have real meaning in that context.

Let's improve it further by adjusting our print feedback function:

// echoes the given feedback array inside HTML.
function printFeedback($feedback) {
    if($feedback['feedback'])) {

        echo '
        
            
                ';
                    echo $feedback['feedback'].'
                
            
        ';

    }
}

Personally, I would create a real feedback object, but for this example I have kept it as an array, which may be fine for your purposes.

Now we can use this function in a more generic function:

// echoes the feedbacks in the feedback starting at position "from" and going to position "to" (exclusive).
function printFeedbackFromTo(Array $feedbacks, $from, $to) {
    for($i = $from; $i < $to; $i++) {
        printFeedback($feedbacks[$i]);
    }
}

And then use that function:

$st = fetch([...]);

echo '';

printFeedbackFromTo(0,2);

echo '';

printFeedbackFromTo(2,4);

echo '';

Misc

• Feedback seems to be user-supplied, so you have to HTML encode it, to prevent XSS.

• Your comments are not needed. Just extract code into properly named functions, possibly with proper function comments (ideally using PHPDoc). In-code comments should not be used to structure your code - use functions for that - but to point out possible unclarities, problems, etc that could not be resolved otherwise.

• The functions you might want to consider would be getFeedbacks($connection, $amountOfFeedbacks) and echoFeedbacks($feedbacks).

• Don't put your style info in a style attribute, but in an external CSS file

StackExchange Code Review Q#123226, answer score: 3