[RESOLVED] how to do "if..or"

[ttdww]

i had this same problem using ASP, though i had a crummy work around. i admit i'm new at both ASP & PHP as you will see. i have a bunch of variables all named sequencially (item1, 2, 3... that could go up to 100 items or more) and just need to determine if any one of them equals a specific value which is always the same, then do this, else do this. here was my old ASP way of doing it, but i cannot find an 'or' capability in PHP. there must be a better way to check a bunch of sequencial variables:

<%if item1="xx" or item2="xx" or item3="xx" or item4="xx".............. then%>
do this
<%else%>
do that
<%End If%>

thanks again for any help.

[malariajoe]

Your "ASP-Method" should work in PHP as well:

if($item1=="xx" or $item2=="xx" or ...)
{
doThis();
}
else
{
doThat();
}

but:

Why don't you use an Array instead of many sequencially named variables.
This would be much easier:

$item[0]="foo";
$item[1]="bar";
$item[2]="foobar";
$item[3]="xx";
....

if(in_array("xx", $item))
{
doSomething();
}

[ttdww]

Thank you so very much. The array method works much better - I knew there must be a more efficient way - I just couldn't get my head around it. This leads me to the next level of efficiency that I'm curious about.

Would you know if there was a way to avoid having to list the all the possible numeric variables (see below) that would go into the array? The problem I'm having is that the shopping cart, which I have no control over, will post the variable "item" if a product is bought and then add variable "item1", "item2", etc. depending on how many more items were purchased. There must be some sort of a 'loop' or 'next' code that could be at the top instead of having to build a huge list of 'requests' like how I am doing it now:

<?
$product[0] = $_REQUEST["item"];
$product[1] = $_REQUEST["item1"];
$product[2] = $_REQUEST["item2"];
$product[3] = $_REQUEST["item3"];
//.........etc (however many possible items that could be bought - 100 or more?)
?>
you purchased: 
<?
if (in_array("1", $product)) {
?>
item 1
<?
} elseif (in_array("2", $product)) {
?>
item 2
<?
} elseif (in_array("3", $product)) {
?>
item 3
<?
//.........etc
} else {
?>
nothing
<?
}
?>

[rincewind456]

Please use [ PHP][/code] tags (without the space) around you're code.

This would cut down the lines of code

$i=0;
foreach ($_REQUEST as $key => $item) {
	$product[] = $item;
	$i++;
}


echo 'you purchased: ';
for ($i = 0;$i <= count($product)-1;$i++){

echo 'Item '.$product[$i]."<br>";
}

However You may have to do some filtering of the $_REQUEST variable depending on what is being returned from the form.

[ttdww]

Thank you kindly for that example. I knew there must be some looping sort of method. 2 quick questions:

1) when I run the sample code you provided, the browser starts to print a few test items I post to it plus a huge empty list forever until I cancel out of the page.

2) also, if I just wanted to keep my manual if/else section above, what part of your code would I keep or modify just to replace a long list of possible request array variables with a looping section of code. I tried just the below and the page errored when I added my if/else section:

$i=0; 
foreach ($_REQUEST as $key => $item)
{
    $product[] = $item; 
    $i++; 
}

[rincewind456]

The first part is to add all the $_REQUEST items to the $product array, and the second part is to print out the $product array.

I can't see why you would get an infinate loop because even if there was nothing in the $product array then it would print nothing other than "you purchased". This is the script I used to test it

<?php
$_REQUEST["item"]=1;
$_REQUEST["item1"]=2;
$_REQUEST["item2"]=3;
$_REQUEST["item3"]=4;


$i=0;
foreach ($_REQUEST as $key => $item) {
	$product[] = $item;
	$i++;
}


echo 'you purchased: ';
for ($i = 0;$i <= count($product)-1;$i++){

echo 'Item '.$product[$i]."<br>";
}


?>

[ttdww]

Thank you again. Now I've got it. I'm going to work it like this since depending on what is ordered different things will need to happen:

<?php 

$i=0; 
foreach ($_REQUEST as $key => $item) { 
    $product[] = $item; 
    $i++; 
} 
for ($i = 0;$i <= count($product)-1;$i++)
{

if ($product[$i]=="product x")
  echo "do this"; 
elseif ($product[$i]=="product y")
  echo "do that"; 
elseif ($product[$i]=="product z")
  echo "do something"; 
//........etc.
}

?>

[rincewind456]

Don't forget to mark the thread as resolved.

[Weedpacket]

for ($i = 0;$i <= count($product)-1;$i++) 

You could also write this as

for ($i = 0;$i < count($product);$i++) 

Note that it's a little on the redundant side to recalculate the size of the $product array every time through the loop - it's not changing, after all.

$count = count($product);
for ($i = 0;$i < $count;$i++) 

If you want to get witty, you could put that back directly in the loop control:

for ($i = 0, $count=count($product);$i < $count;$i++) 

Or use foreach (renaming the $product array as $products, because it contains more than one product, then looking at each product in the array)

foreach ($products as $product) 

[ttdww]

Amazing - thank you again! I admit I don't fully understand how all the above works, but I will try some coding replacements to help me see them in action to understand the flow of information. Again, thanks so much.