Question

I have a bit of JQuery that creates a mobile menu for a responsive design. I ran the code through a code sniffer and it’s telling me that “Inline control structures are not allowed“.

The area of code in question is:

 else {
    $('#main-menu li').each(function () {
      if ($(this).children('ul').length)
        $(this).append('<span class="drop-down-toggle"><span class="drop-down-arrow"></span></span>');
    });

… and the specific line from the above is:

if ($(this).children('ul').length)

I tried to Google search “Jquery inline control structures” but did not come up with much.

Here is a pastebin of the entire function for reference. I am guessing the code can be rephrased but I have no reference on which to change it. The code actually works so I am not sure if it’s necessarily a syntax error per se.

Answer 1

It probably wants you to use braces:

else {
    $('#main-menu li').each(function () {
      if ($(this).children('ul').length) {
        $(this).append('<span class="drop-down-toggle"><span class="drop-down-arrow"></span></span>');
      }
    });

It is always safer to use braces with if and else. It never causes a problem and can occasionally prevent an accidental error (often when later editing the code).