Question

I already have a select option like this:

<?php
    echo 'Age : <select id="age" name ="age" class="selecta">';
    for($i = 0; $i <= 24; $i += 0.25) 
    { 
?>
    <option value="<?php echo $i ;?>" 
    <?php
    if ($_SESSION['age'] == $i) 
    { 
        echo " selected='selected'"; 
    } 
    ?> > 
    <?php echo $i .'&nbsp&nbsp' ?>
    </option>  
    <?php 
    }
    echo '</select> months <br />';
?>

which works good and displays this :

  0           // means 0 month
  0.25        // means 1 week   or  0.25 of month
  0.50        // means 2 weeks  or half month
  0.75
  1           // means 1 month
  1.25
  ....
  24

but it doesn’t look too good for users. So what I want is to have them like this:

0      // 0month
1 week  
2 weeks
3 weeks
4 weeks  
1 month
1 month and 1 week
1 month and 2 weeks
.....
24 months

It’s not my final desire to be exactly like that but I would something like that.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

for($i = 0; $i <= 24; $i += 0.25) { 

You are having a sequence of 97 iterations here. It is equally to

range(0, 96);

You then map any of these step to a specific number:

$map = function($step) {
    return $step * 0.25;
}

Which would for example create the following sequence:

0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2, ... , 23, 23.25, 23.5, 23.75, 24

So now you don’t want these numbers but just the nice months. You can just calculate them if you take the steps (instead your fractional numbers) more easily:

month: floor($step / 4)   - division (integer)
weeks: $step % 4          - modulo   (integer)

Or as the mapping function to turn that into text:

$map = function ($step) {
    $month = floor($step / 4);
    $week  = $step % 4;

    $buffer = '';

    if ($month) {
        $buffer .= "$month month";
    }

    if ($week) {
        if ($month) {
            $buffer .= ' and ';
        }

        $buffer .=  "$week week" . ($week == 1 ? '' : 's');
    }

    return $buffer;
};

For example:

$map(0)   # (empty)
$map(1)   # 1 week
$map(10)  # 2 month and 3 weeks
$map(95)  # 23 month and 3 weeks
$map(96)  # 24 month

So now you only need to map the range as keys to their values and then you can do the standard output of a select box with these values:

$list = range(0, 96);

$selected = 12; // $_SESSION['age']

echo "Age : \n<select id='age' name ='age' class='selecta'>\n";
foreach ($list as $value)
{
    $label = $map($value);
    printf("  <option value='%d'%s>%s</option>\n", $value, $value === $selected ? " selected='selected'" : '', $label);
}
echo "</select>\n";

Which gives you your output (Demo):

Age : 
<select id='age' name ='age' class='selecta'>
  <option value='0'></option>
  <option value='1'>1 week</option>
  <option value='2'>2 weeks</option>
  <option value='3'>3 weeks</option>
  <option value='4'>1 month</option>
  ...
  <option value='11'>2 month and 3 weeks</option>
  <option value='12' selected='selected'>3 month</option>
  <option value='13'>3 month and 1 week</option>
  ...
  <option value='50'>12 month and 2 weeks</option>
  <option value='51'>12 month and 3 weeks</option>
  <option value='52'>13 month</option>
  <option value='53'>13 month and 1 week</option>
  <option value='54'>13 month and 2 weeks</option>
  ...
  <option value='92'>23 month</option>
  <option value='93'>23 month and 1 week</option>
  <option value='94'>23 month and 2 weeks</option>
  <option value='95'>23 month and 3 weeks</option>
  <option value='96'>24 month</option>
</select>