inline elseif in PHP

Question

Is there a way to have an inline if statement in PHP which also includes a elseif?

I would assume the logic would go something like this:

$unparsedCalculation = ($calculation > 0) ? "<span style=\"color: #9FE076;\">".$calculation : ($calculation < 0) ? "<span style=\"color: #FF736A;\">".$calculation : $calculation;

That's incredibly hard to read. It will be a maintenance nightmare in the future. — rid, May 14 '12 at 22:02
Did you try the code you posted? Did it work? If not, what error/wrong behavior did you observe? — Asaph, May 14 '12 at 22:02
Touche, Radu - I agree. This is just the first elseif statement I could readily find in my code. — bswinnerton, May 14 '12 at 22:08

rid · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-14T22:07:01.123

22

elseif is nothing more than else if, so, practically, there is no elseif, it's just a convenience. The same convenience is not provided for the ternary operator, because the ternary operator is meant to be used for very short logic.

if ($a) { ... } elseif ($b) { ... } else { ... }

is identical to

if ($a) { ... } else { if ($b) { ... } else { ... } }

Therefore, the ternary equivalent is

$a ? ( ... ) : ( $b ? ( ... ) : ( ... ) )

edited May 14 '12 at 22:07

answered May 14 '12 at 22:01

rid

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While you are correct that nested ternary statements should be enclosed in parentheses, it has nothing to do with if...else if. Ternary in PHP is left-associative (it is evaluated from left to right). http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.php – Mr Griever May 14 '12 at 22:38

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

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you can use nested Ternary Operator

      (IF ? THEN : ELSE) 
      (IF ? THEN : ELSE(IF ? THEN : ELSE(IF ? THEN : ELSE))

for better readability coding standard can be found here

edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

Community

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answered May 14 '12 at 22:04

Sunil Kartikey

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 14 '12 at 22:04

You need to wrap some of that in parenthesis for order of operation issues, but sure, you could do that. While there is no "elseif" for ternary operators, it's effectively the same thing

if (condition) ? (true) : (false> if (condition) ? (true) : (false));

Though you really shouldn't code like this...it's confusing from a readability perspective. Nobody is going to look at that and be "sweet, ninja!" they will say "ugh, wtf"

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 20 '18 at 13:57

Try this,

(($condition_1) ? "output_1" : (($condition_2) ?  "output_2" : "output_3"));

In your case it will be:

$unparsedCalculation = (($calculation > 0) ? "<span style=\"color: #9FE076;\">".$calculation : (($calculation < 0) ?  "<span style=\"color: #FF736A;\">".$calculation : $calculation));

inline elseif in PHP

4 Answers4