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PHP

Sam Donald
Sam Donald
36,305 Points
Posted by Sam Donald
Sam Donald
36,305 Points

Use an array to check if $_GET["cat"] value is valid

Rather than write out a long if else statement to check if the $_GET value was valid and present I thought it would be more efficient to use an array.

<?php 
// set default Page Title for catalog.php
$pageTitle = "Full Catalog";
// Build an array of excepted categories
$catArray = array("books", "movies", "music");
// Check to see if category is appended to url
if (isset($_GET["cat"])){
  // Store the current category appended to the url
  $currentCat = $_GET["cat"];
  // Check if the $currentCat matches any value in the $catArray
  foreach($catArray as $value){
    if ($value == $currentCat){
      // If it does set the $pageTitle to that value and capitalise first letters
      $pageTitle = mb_convert_case($currentCat, MB_CASE_TITLE, "UTF-8");
    } //end if
  } //end foreach
} // end isset if

include("inc/header.php"); ?>

  <div class="section page">
    <h1><?php echo $pageTitle; ?></h1>
  </div>

<?php include("inc/footer.php"); ?>

It looks long with the comments but I think its a lot more efficient. For example if you added more categories in the future all you'd have to do is add it to the end of the array. Rather than add all the extra else if conditions like in the video.

i.e: $catArray = array("books", "movies", "music", "games");