Question

I am creating a site where different account types will be shown a different version of each page. I have it working, but my question is in terms of speed / “best practices”. Which of the following (or something completely different) would be the best way to do this?

Option 1. Break each account type into individual sections of the file:

if($accountType == "type1"){
  //All lines of code for the account type1 page
}
elseif($accountType == "type2"){
  //All lines of code for the account type2 page
}
elseif($accountType == "type3"){
  //All lines of code for the account type3 page
}

Option 2. Break each account type into sections of the file using include files:

if($accountType == "type1"){
  //this file has all of the code for account type1 page
  require('includes/accounts/type1/file.php');
}
elseif($accountType == "type2"){
  //this file has all of the code for account type1 page
  require('includes/accounts/type2/file.php');
}
elseif($accountType == "type3"){
  //this file has all of the code for account type1 page
  require('includes/accounts/type3/file.php');
}

Option 3. Use lots of conditional statements throughout the file to generate the page for each account type:

if($accountType == "type1"){
  $result = mysql_query("//sql statement for account type1");
}
elseif($accountType == "type2"){
  $reslut = mysql_query("//sql statement for account type2");
}
elseif($accountType == "type3"){
  $result = mysql_query("//sql statement for account type3");
}
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
  $variable1 = $row['variable1'];
  if($accountType == "type1"){
    $variable2 = $row['type1Variable2'];
    $variable3 = $row['type1Variable3'];
  }
  elseif($accountType == "type2"){
    $variable2 = $row['type2Variable2'];
  }
  elseif($accountType == "type3"){
    $variable2 = $row['type3Variable2'];
  }
  $variable4 = $row['Variable4'];
}
echo "The variables echoed out are $variable1, $variable2";
if($accountType == "type1"){
  echo ", $variable3";
}
echo "and $variable4";
//the rest of the file to follow in the same way

Basically it comes down to this:

Option 1: the file is 1000 lines of code.
Option 2: the file is 30 lines of code, and each include file is between 250-350 lines of code.
Option 3: the file is 650 lines of code. It is less because some of the code can be ‘shared’ between all three account types.

Which option would be the fastest / “best practice”? I am leaning toward option 3 because overall file size would be smaller, but there are a lot more conditional statements with this option (option 1 and 2 only would have three conditional statements, whereas option 3 would have 40 for example). Does having this many more conditional statements make the file process slower? Is there actually any difference between option 1 and option 2 (does separating the blocks of code into include files mean that it will only load one include file per account type? Or does php load all three files and just choose the proper one?)?

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

In terms of efficiency, Option 3 would be the slowest as it would have more conditional-checks than any other – however, the speed would be very (very) negligible.

To define the “best practice” would be impossible – it really comes down to “what will be the easiest for you and who-you-work-with to maintain”. If, down the road, you have to make massive changes to the code but only for $accountType == "type2", do you want to go through a ton of spagetti code (Option 3), or a bit more separated-into-blocks (Option 1), or just open the specific file for that type (Option 2)?

In my personal opinion, even without using OOP/MVC-framework practices, I would recommend Option 2. Splitting each individual type into their own separated files will save you a lot of headaches in the future if you need to update anything. You can even merge certain parts – for instance, if all three types have one “block” that has all of the same look & feel, you can define that in it’s own include and include it in all three of the types’-files.