Re: if elseif elseif elseif....

On Sun, Mar 08, 2009 at 03:03:33PM +1100, Naz wrote: > > Generally, the approach I take is as follows: > > $errors = array(); > if (empty($_POST['name'])) > array_push($errors, 'A name was not entered.'); > if (empty($_POST['address'])) > array_push($errors, 'An address was no supplied.'); > if (empty($_POST['gender']) || ($_POST['gender'] != 'M' > && > $_POST['gender'] != 'F')) > array_push($errors, 'A gender was not supplied.'); > > And then you can check that all form fields were correctly filled in by > checking for: > > count($errors) == 0 > > If that is not true, simply output the contents of the $errors array > appropriately. The advantages of doing it like this are: > > 1. You get full details on why the form was not filled out, rather > than simply telling users "The form was not filled in" and not > telling them what fields they missed or what was incorrectly > filled out. > 2. You can set multiple criteria over and above simply checking for a > value, e.g., ensuring that the gender field is either M or F and > not an invalid value (in practice this will probably be a radio or > drop list to ensure correct values, but this method ensures that > you can do value sanity checking as well for things like dates etc) > From the php.net manual for array_push(): Note: If you use array_push() to add one element to the array it's better to use $array[] = because in that way there is no overhead of calling a function. But that's the only change I would make. Overall, I completely agree with this philosophy. Paul -- Paul M. Foster