» Conditionals

Conditional statements in PHP are used to perform different actions based on different conditions.

Conditional Statements

Very often when you write code, you want to perform different actions for different decisions. You can use conditional statements in your code to do this.

In PHP we have two conditional statements:

  • if (...else) statement - use this statement if you want to execute a set of code when a condition is true (and another if the condition is not true)
  • switch statement - use this statement if you want to select one of many sets of lines to execute

The If Statement

If you want to execute some code if a condition is true and another code if a condition is false, use the if....else statement.

Syntax

if (condition)
code to be executed if condition is true;
else
code to be executed if condition is false;

Example

The following example will output "Have a nice weekend!" if the current day is Friday, otherwise it will output "Have a nice day!":

<html>
<body>
<?php
$d=date("D");
if ($d=="Fri")
echo "Have a nice weekend!"; 
else
echo "Have a nice day!"; 
?>
</body>

</html>

If more than one line should be executed when a condition is true, the lines should be enclosed within curly braces:

<html>

<body>
<?php
$x=10;
if ($x==10)
{
echo "Hello<br />"; 
echo "Good morning<br />";
}
?>
</body>
</html>

The Switch Statement

If you want to select one of many blocks of code to be executed, use the Switch statement.

Syntax

switch (expression)
{
case label1:
  code to be executed if expression = label1;
  break;  
case label2:
  code to be executed if expression = label2;
  break;
default:
  code to be executed
  if expression is different 
  from both label1 and label2;

}

Example

This is how it works: First we have a single expression (most often a variable), that is evaluated once. The value of the expression is then compared with the values for each case in the structure. If there is a match, the block of code associated with that case is executed. Use break to prevent the code from running into the next case automatically. The default statement is used if none of the cases are true.

<html>
<body>
<?php
switch ($x)
{
case 1:
  echo "Number 1";
  break;
case 2:
  echo "Number 2";
  break;
case 3:
  echo "Number 3";
  break;
default:
  echo "No number between 1 and 3";
}
?>
</body>
</html>