Hi, I have an application that I need to make changes to but have not been able to find the code who wrote it for a long time. It is a small change but I don't know the correct syntax.

the application has a form for adding animals to a database. On of the elements on the form is "Gender" and has radio buttons for male and female and enters the values into the db as "m" or "f" with male being selected by default. I have edited the form to give a third option "w" (for wether - a neutered male).

The save function has the following line of code in it for the gender:

PHP Code:

$gender = ( $gender == "male" ) ? "m" : "f"; 


How do I change that to include the "w" choice?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

I like the switch statement in those cases. Much more readable than a if/else series.

PHP Code:

switch($gender){
  case 'male':
    $gender='m';
    break;
  case 'female':
    $gender='f';
    break;
  case 'wether':
    $gender='w';
    break;
} 


But you should rather use the "value" of the option rather than it's displayed value

<select name'sel'>
  <option value='m'>Male</option>
  <option value='f'>female</option>
  <option value='w'>Wteher</option>
</select>

and you will get back directly 'm','f', or 'w' without needing to check for the text returned.

Thank you very much.

Originally Posted by borzoid

Hi, I have an application that I need to make changes to but have not been able to find the code who wrote it for a long time. It is a small change but I don't know the correct syntax.

the application has a form for adding animals to a database. On of the elements on the form is "Gender" and has radio buttons for male and female and enters the values into the db as "m" or "f" with male being selected by default. I have edited the form to give a third option "w" (for wether - a neutered male).

The save function has the following line of code in it for the gender:

PHP Code:

$gender = ( $gender == "male" ) ? "m" : "f"; 


How do I change that to include the "w" choice?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

I am going to take a moment to teach.

The statement that you gave is called a ternary operator. It is a shortened form of an if-else statement and is used to reduce the number of lines from four to one. As with any if-else statement you only have two options, hence with a three-option statement you cannot use the ternary operator.

The switch-statement is a very good solution; however, an alternate solution is an if-elseif-else statement.

PHP Code:

if( $a == 1 )
    echo '$a is equal to 1.';
elseif( $a == 2 )
    echo '$a is equal to 2.';
else
    echo '$a is not equal to 1 or two.'; 


Nick