PHP doesn't work with Relationship field

Question

I’m having trouble embedding PHP into a template and having anything on the page render, and I assume it’s because I’m working with a Relationship field.

Just as an example, this works:

{portfolio_projects}
<span class="date"><?php echo("Client A"); ?></span>
{/portfolio_projects}

and this works:

{portfolio_projects}
<span class="date">{portfolio_projects:client_name}</span>
{/portfolio_projects}

but this does not (I just get a blank page with empty html and body tags):

{portfolio_projects}
<span class="date"><?php echo({portfolio_projects:client_name}); ?></span>
{/portfolio_projects} 

So I reckon I’m doing something wrong. Help?! (BTW, I’ll be needing to use PHP on my template to do a regex/preg_replace on strings.)

Answer 1

A couple things here:

1) You don't have any quotes surrounding the template variable in your PHP echo function. This is likely causing a PHP error, because the string is not enclosed in quotes.

2) It's a really really really bad idea to use PHP in templates. What kind of replacement are you trying to do? Have you looked at add-ons that could do this instead, such as Low Replace? Failing that, writing a custom plugin is pretty trivial and would be a much better way to accomplish your needs.