Question

I’m trying to simplify some code where I have an extremely long switch statement (20+ cases). The only thing I need from the switch is to increment a counter.

The currently working switch is set up like this:

//multidimensional-array is above
while ($responses = mysql_fetch_assoc($surveydata)){
    switch($responses['cou_mun']){
        case "New York":
            $targetCities[0][1]++;
            break;
        case …
    }
}

I have the following multi-dimensional array and for loop:

//           [index]   'city name',count,minimum
$targetCities[0]=array('New York City',0,250);
$targetCities[1]=array('Los Angeles',0,250);
// 20 more

$responses = mysql_fetch_assoc($surveydata); //this is taken from the while-loop when I comment out the while() and switch().

for ($i=0; $i < count($targetCities); $i++){

    if ($responses['cou_mun'] == $targetCities[$i][0]){$targetCities[$i][1]++;}
    else{$nontargetcity++;}

    echo "<li><span>" . $targetCities[$i][0] . "</span><span>" . $targetCities[$i][1] . "</span>" . amountUnderMin($targetCities[$i][1],$targetCities[$i][2]) . "<span>" . $targetCities[$i][2] . "</span><span>" . cityMinMet($targetCities[$i][1],$targetCities[$i][2]) . "</span></li>";
}

$responses['cou_mun'] returns a city-name (such as “Los Angeles”).

The only thing that’s not working is the if (increments the counter).

I expect the 2nd dimension of the current $targetCities to be incremented, however when the line is printed/echo’d, it still shows as 0 (yet I can see in the Db that there is more than one “Los Angeles”).

P.S. I made sure the names in the array exactly match (spell+whitespace+case) the name options in the Db.

Thanks!

EDIT: the $nontargetcity counter is returning 21 (the number of cases).

Answer 1

$surveydata = mysql_query( … );
$targetCities[0]=array('New York',0,250);
$targetCities[1]=array('Los Angeles',0,250);
//etc
//etc
//etc
$respondentCities=array();

while ($responses = mysql_fetch_assoc($surveydata)) {
    array_push($respondentCities,$responses['cou_mun']);
} //i'm sorting the values in $respondentCities because i need them later

//function amountUnderMin(){…}
//function cityMinMet(){…}

for ($i=0; $i < count($targetCities); $i++){
    foreach($respondentCities as $respondentCity){
        if($respondentCity==$targetCities[$i][0]){$targetCities[$i][1]++;break;}
    }
    echo "<li><span>" . $targetCities[$i][0] . "</span><span>" . $targetCities[$i][1] . "</span>" . amountUnderMin($targetCities[$i][1],$targetCities[$i][2]) . "<span>" . $targetCities[$i][2] . "</span><span>" . cityMinMet($targetCities[$i][1],$targetCities[$i][2]) . "</span></li>";
}