Question

I got asked to write a little PHP script that takes some POSTed input from a few drop down boxes which give some selectable criteria and at the end, spits out one or more string variables containing unique codes.

The variable names are of the form $thingPlaceType, and each one is unique. The drop down boxes allow for selection of:

• either one “thing” or all “things” together
• either one “place” or all “places” together
• either one “type” or all “types” together

I can’t figure out how to select these codes without resorting to nested switch statements where I do

switch($_POST['thing'])
{
  case "thing1":
     switch($_POST['place'])
     {
       case "place1":
          switch($_POST['type'])
          {
            case "type1":
               $output = $thing1Place1Type1;
            case "type2":
               $output = $thing1Place1Type2;
            case "alltypes":
               $output = $thing1Place1Type1.$thing1Place1Type2.$thing1PlaceType3;
           }
        case "place2":
        ...
        case "allplaces":
        ...
      }
  case "thing2":
     switch($_POST['place'])
     {
       case "place1":
          switch($_POST['type'])
          {
            case "type1":
               $output = $thing1Place1Type1;
            ...
      ...
  ...
}

It seems that the code is turning into the Arrow Anti-Pattern. I’m thinking I could possibly do something using multi-dimensional arrays, or maybe a single array where I match the values against the keys. But I feel that’s clutching at straws and there must be something I’m missing. Is it time to turn the strings into proper objects with properties?

Answer 1

if you want to convert them to objects.. you can create this.

  class Object {
        private $thing;
        private $place;
        private $type;

        public function __construct() {
            $this->thing = $_POST['thing'];
            $this->place = $_POST['place'];
            $this->type  = $_POST['type'];

            $this->processThing($this->thing, $this->place, $this->type);
        }

        public function processThing($thing = false, $place = false, $type = false) {
               //noW that you have all the properties you just need just process it
        }

    }

    if(isset($_POST['thing']) && isset($_POST['place']) && isset($_POST['type'])) {
        $object = new Object();
    }