Question

I have these 3 if statements which depending on the value in the variable will either put it into one column or another. But for some reason it always uses only one of the 3 even if the if statement should be false. I have placed the code below. Thanks for any help.

$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', '');
if (!$link) {
  // error happened
  print(0);
}
mysql_select_db('test');

// sanitize the value
$value = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['uname']);
$id = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['id']);

if($value == "Paid" || "Waiting on Payment"){
  $sql = "UPDATE test SET payment='$value' WHERE id='$id'";
}

if($value == "Repaired" || "Waiting on Repairs"){
  $sql = "UPDATE test SET repair='$value' WHERE id='$id'";
}

if($value == "With Student" || "Awaiting Pickup"){   //Always uses this one for somereason unknown to me..
  $sql = "UPDATE test SET returned='$value' WHERE id='$id'";
}

// start the query
// check if the query was executed
if(mysql_query($sql, $link)){
  // everything is Ok, the data was inserted
  print(1);
  echo $sql;    
} else {
  // error happened
  print(0);
}

?>

Answer 1

The previous solutions don’t address the problem.

What you need to use is the if-else block after if.

if(conditionA is true){
  //do taskA
}
else if(conditionB is true){
  //do taskB
}
else if(condition is true){
  //do taskC
}
else {
  //do taskD
}

That answers your question.

But then comes the next problem, which is answered @ https://stackoverflow.com/a/10492151/260034 by “A Bag”. It is because the strings “Waiting on Payment”, “Waiting on Repairs”, etc always get evaluated to TRUE. So even if $value is not equal to “Paid”, the string “Waiting on Payment” evaluates to TRUE.

The OR operator || returns TRUE if either of the 2 operands evaluates to TRUE.

So all your if statements evaluate to TRUE and since you have a bunch of if statements and not an if-ifelse block, the block of code in your last if condition seems to be the one which is always executing.

The revised code would be something like,

if($value == "Paid" || $value == "Waiting on Payment"){
  $sql = "UPDATE test SET payment='$value' WHERE id='$id'";
}
else if($value == "Repaired" || $value == "Waiting on Repairs"){
  $sql = "UPDATE test SET repair='$value' WHERE id='$id'";
}
else if($value == "With Student" || $value == "Awaiting Pickup"){
  $sql = "UPDATE test SET returned='$value' WHERE id='$id'";
}