Question

The problem

I have a list of tasks with which a user is greeted with upon login. I want to be able to
filter tasks according to assignment. The relevant fields on the table are:

**tasks table**
task_id   | (FK int) user  | (FK int) team
            (assigned to)    (assigned to)

And users belong to one team. On the front end I have checkboxes:

[ ] Mine     [ ] My Team's   [ ] Others    (Filter)

The conditions are mutually exclusive. For example, if I only check "My Team’s", it’s implied that
I want to see all tasks assigned to my team but not me. If I check "Mine", I only want to see tasks assigned to me.

I can use any combination of the checkboxes to filter my results.

The (ugly) solution:

Convert flags as binary number to an int (little endian) and use switch:

$num = bindec("{$flag1}{$flag2}{$flag3}");

switch ($num) {
    // [ ] Mine   [ ] My Team's   [X] Others
    case 1:
        $filter = array('team <>' => $teamId);
        break;
    // [ ] Mine   [X] My Team's   [X] Others
    case 3:
        $filter = array('user <>' => $userId);
        break;

    /* a few more */

    // [X] Mine   [X] My Team's   [X] Others
    default:
        $filter = array();
        break;
}

The generated $filter array is passed on to a query builder.
It works. But I feel this is really ugly. Is there a better way?

Answer 1

Well, personally I don’t think that’s too ugly…

Why not just create two filter arrays (one for and, the other for or)

$andFilter = array();
$orFilter = array();
if ($flag1) {
    $orFilter['user = '] = $userId;
} else {
    $andFilter['user <> '] = $userId;
}
if ($flag2) {
    $orFilter['team = '] = $teamId;
} else {
    $andfilter['team <> '] = $teamId;
}
if ($flag3) {
    $orFilter['1 = '] = 1;
}

Then, join the queries as ($orFilter) AND ($andFilter) where each element of the filter is separated by the respective boolean operator (OR for $orFilter, AND for $andFilter)…

It should satisfy all your needs, and be relatively future proof (as you can add flags as you see fit)…