Question

So I have this for loop with 36 if-queries inside. Any advice on making it more efficient?
You can view the complete code here

Here’s a sample of what it looks like:

$numbers = range(1, 36);
shuffle($numbers);  
for ($m =0; $m<37; $m++){
    if ($numbers[$m] == "1"){
        $mirza[$m] = "RUTHIE";
        $mage[$m] = "3";
        $mquote[$m] = "I get to learn a lot of new things here, like sign language!";
        $link[$m] = "http://www.google.com";
    }

    if ($numbers[$m] == "2"){
        $mirza[$m] = "AIDA";
        $mage[$m] = "82";
        $mquote[$m] = "This is like a club and I know and like all the members. It's good therapy.";
        $link[$m] = "/about/";
    }

    if ($numbers[$m] == "3"){
        $mirza[$m] = "AMIRE";
        $mage[$m] = "4";
        $mquote[$m] = "I am learning how to share and make friends.";
        $link[$m] = "/about/";
    }
}

Answer 1

When you have this much data it really should be in a database (maybe XML or document style) or a text file.

Still, I’ll show you a way to improve this by hard-coding all the data in one place and eliminating the need for any if or switch statements. You should AT VERY LEAST change to switch statements, better still hard-code all the data in one place (below), better still get a database or CSV text file storing these values.

$data = array( 
         array('mirza' => 'RUTHIE', 'mage' => '3', 'mquote' => 'I get to learn a lot of new things here, like sign language!', 'link' => 'http://www.google.com'),
         array(......
             );

$numbers = range(1, 36);
shuffle($numbers);  
for ($m =0; $m<37; $m++){
     $index = $numbers[$m];
     $mirza[$m] = $data[$index]['mirza'];
     $mage[$m] = $data[$index]['mage'];
     $mquote[$m] = $data[$index]['mage'];
     $link[$m] = $data[$index]['link'];
 }

Just to be clear, the ‘efficiency’ issue here isn’t so much speed (though this way is faster). Its that what you have is a nightmare to maintain and change.

You might do better to seriously reconsider the design of your app, specifically making an object with mirza, mage, mquote, link as fields.