Question

Is there any good alternative for the plain if statements in PHP? I know about switch, but I’ll guess that there’s some more refined alternative out there that comes handy when working with really big if statements.

Thanks a lot,

Answer 1

If you want to improve readability only, then you can always split up the expressions inside the if statement:

$exp1 = is_array($var) && isset($var['key']);
$exp2 = is_object($var) && isset($var->key);
$exp3 = substr($string, 0, 4) == 'foo';
$exp4 = ($exp1 || $exp2) && $exp3;
if ($exp4) {}

instead of

if (((is_array($var) && isset($var['key'])) || (is_object($var) && isset($var->key))) && substr($string, 0, 4) == 'foo') {}

Obviously, these are simplified examples, but you get the idea…