PHP Newbie, modifying a simple function

[kennyw1000]

Hello everyone,

I am still learning PHP, and have been tasked with modifying a script. There is a function in the script that checks to see how many times a user has sent an email within a certain period of time. I need to add a little piece that allows one user (the admin) to send an unlimited amount of emails. I thought the best way to do this was to put in a piece that basically says: with this user, skip the email count. Below is the function:

 
////////////////////////////////////////////////
public function checkUserEmailCount($uid){

    $q = "SELECT DATE_FORMAT('last_email', '%Y %c') AS last_email, email_count FROM user WHERE id=".$this->quote_smart($uid);

    $result = $this->query($q);
    $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);

    $today = (int) date('Ym');
    $last_email = (int) $row['last_email'];

    if ($last_email < $today){
        $q = "UPDATE user SET email_count=0 where id=".$this->quote_smart($uid);
        $result = $this->query($q);
        return true;
    } else if($row['email_count'] < MAX_FLYERS){
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
 

I'm not sure how to do this, but I thought about adding something like this:

        If user ID = 285 then skip email count

    } else if($last_email < $today){
        $q = "UPDATE user SET email_count=0 where id=".$this->quote_smart($uid);
        $result = $this->query($q);
        return true;
    } else if($row['email_count'] < MAX_FLYERS){
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[alanzhao]

if I understand your question correctly, your basic flow should look like this:

If ($user_id != 285) {
        checkUserEmailCount();
}
public function checkUserEmailCount($uid){

    $q = "SELECT DATE_FORMAT('last_email', '%Y %c') AS last_email, email_count FROM user WHERE id=".$this->quote_smart($uid);

    $result = $this->query($q);
    $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);

    $today = (int) date('Ym');
    $last_email = (int) $row['last_email'];

    if ($last_email < $today){
        $q = "UPDATE user SET email_count=0 where id=".$this->quote_smart($uid);
        $result = $this->query($q);
        return true;
    } else if($row['email_count'] < MAX_FLYERS){
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
} 

[kennyw1000]

That is actually a better way of doing it. I didn't think of "not equal to". I will have the admin test it, and let you know if it worked for sure.

Thanks.

[kennyw1000]

So now I want to add another userid to that statement. something like this:

	If ($user_id != 285 & 128) {
        checkUserEmailCount();
	}

I tried a few different things but got errors

[stolzyboy]

if you want the check to be done only if the userid is not equal to 285 or 128, do this:

If ($user_id != 285 || $user_id != 128) { 
        checkUserEmailCount(); 
    }

that says if userid is not equal to 285 OR it's not equal to 128, then do the checkemailcount function

hth,
stolzyboy

[kennyw1000]

Thank you, I actually tried this, and I think it works. Can you tell me the difference?

If (($id != 26) && ($id != 166)) {
    checkUserEmailCount();
}

[laserlight]

Your code is correct as it calls checkUserEmailCount() if $id is not 26 and $id is not 166. By using De Morgan's theorem, we can also write it as:

if (!($id == 26 || $id == 166)) {
    checkUserEmailCount();
}

stolzyboy's code is not correct as it always calls checkUserEmailCount(). To illustrate this, let's see what the logical expression evaluates to for the values 0, 285, and 128:

Let $user_id = 0:
0 != 285 || 0 != 128
true || true
true

So checkUserEmailCount() is called when $user_id = 0.

Let $user_id = 285:
285 != 285 || 285 != 128
false || true
true

So checkUserEmailCount() is called when $user_id = 285.

Let $user_id = 128:
128 != 285 || 128 != 128
true || false
true

So checkUserEmailCount() is called when $user_id = 128.

Since the set of numbers chosen for this test is representative of the range of ids, we can conclude just empirically that the code does not work as advertised.

[stolzyboy]

yes, i did that ass backwards... i always do that when showing people... it's not until i do it in actual code that i see that

my puny brain don't work sometimes, i always swap the $$ with || when doing !=

🙂