Question

I have a user registration script. At one stage I call a method three times. Once to check if the method returns true, else if it doesn’t, does it return a string (containing an error message) and if it does get the returned string and place it in a variable.

Is the a more productive way of doing this so that I only need to call the method once? But still get all answers I need?

Heres the code:

//check thumbnail is present and good
            if($register->checkThumb()){
                //send image to permanent image directory
                $register->moveUploadedImage();

                //if the thumbnail failed validation put the error message in variable
            }else if(is_string($register->checkThumb())){
                $message = $register->checkThumb();

            }

Answer 1

    $thumb = $register->checkThumb(); //call method once and save in variable
   /* using just if($thumb) would return always true, because 
      the function may returns an errormessage on failure 
      which is ja string, which is not empty, not 0, not false == true */
    if($thumb === true){
      //send image to permanent image directory
      $register->moveUploadedImage();
    }else{ //so then it's enough to ask for error this way
      $message = $thumb;
    }