Question

Hi I’m about to type some 500 else if statements into my code (PHP) which have the exact same coding each:

if (color=White);
   rgb = 255-255-255;
   print rgb;
else if (color=Black);
   rgb = 0-0-0;
   print rgb;
else if (color=Red);
   rgb = 255-0-0;
   print rgb;
else if (color=Blue);
   rgb = 0-0-255;
   print rgb;
[the list keeps going]

I also (luckily) have a table that displays the color in the first column and rgb value in the next column for 500 of them… how do I use this to save time typing all those else if statements? Some how I have to reference the table file (made in excel, I’m guessing I’ll have to save it as .csv?)

Answer 1

Your best bet is to put that data (color name to RGB value) into a database, then just do:

SELECT rgb FROM colors WHERE color = 'red';

If you can’t do a database, you could use fgetcsv() and read CSV data into an array. Then just output:

echo $colors[$color];

To read a CSV file into an array, use something like:

//assuming the first field is color and the second rgb
$fh = fopen($file, 'r');
while (($row = fgetcsv($fh)) !== FALSE) {
  $colors[$row[0]] = $row[1];
}