How do I make this javascript more eloquent without using objects and switch statements?

Question

I don't want to type out every possible price combination but I've been searching for a long time and can't find a better way:

var selection = new Array (4);
selection[0] = new Array ('$210' 'etc', 'etc', 'etc', 'etc');
selection[1] = new Array ('Solar', 'Supernova', 'Quasar', 'Galaxy', 'Blackhole');
selection[2] = new Array ('Talk', 'Talk & Text', 'Talk, Text & Data');
selection[3] = new Array ('One Year', 'One', 'Two Years', 'Two', 'Three Years', 'Three', 'Four Years', 'Four');



function selectPhone () {

    var yourPhone = prompt("What kind of Smartphone would you like: Solar: $100, Supernova: $200, Quasar: $300, Galaxy: $400, Blackhole: $500?");

    if (yourPhone == selection[1][0]) {
        console.log("You picked: " + yourPhone + "."), selectPlan ();
    } else {
        console.log("Error.");
    }
}



function selectPlan () {

    var yourPlan = prompt("What Plan Would You Like: Talk: $10, Talk & Text: $20 or Talk, Text & Data: $30?");

    if (yourPlan == selection[2][0]) {
        console.log("You picked: " + yourPlan + "."), selectTerm ();
    } else {
        console.log("Error.");
    }
}



function selectTerm () {

    var yourTerm = prompt("What Term Would You Like: One Year: $100, Two Years: $200, Three Years: $300 or Four Years: $400?");

    if (yourTerm == selection[3][0] || selection [3][1]) {
        console.log("You picked: " + selection[3][0] + ". \n Your total is: " + selection[0][0]);
    } else {
        console.log("Error.");
    }
}


selectPhone ();

I can't figure out how to program it so it can just pick up the selections made and convert them to numeric values and perform simple addition on them. I'm a beginner so please explain everything. THANKS A LOT!!

Answer 1

You could just use something like parseInt() where you need to convert to integers. Here's the documentation https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/parseInt

Answer 2

You do it like this:

var selection = new Array (4);
selection[0] = new Array ('$210', 'etc', 'etc', 'etc', 'etc');
selection[1] = new Array ('Solar', 'Supernova', 'Quasar', 'Galaxy', 'Blackhole');
selection[2] = new Array ('Talk', 'Talk & Text', 'Talk, Text & Data');
selection[3] = new Array ('One Year', 'One', 'Two Years', 'Two', 'Three Years', 'Three', 'Four Years', 'Four');


function selectPhone (selectionArray) {
    var yourPhone = prompt("What kind of Smartphone would you like: Solar?");
    for( s1 in selectionArray ){
        for( s2 in selectionArray[s1] ) {
            if (yourPhone == selectionArray[s1][s2] ) {
                console.log("You picked: " + yourPhone + ".");
            } else {
                console.log("Error.");
            }
        }
    }
}

selectPhone(selection);

You do need to know about objects though. Also look into the for .. in function in JS - documentation will explain it better than me, but in short, you loop through properties of the parent array(with the for..in) - basically through a list of arrays. Than using the same idea, you loop through the each array in part. To give you a visual representation, you array looks like this:

var selection  = [//outer array
                    [ //inner array - property of outer array (first for..in) = s1
                       '$210', //property of inner array (second for..in) = s2                          
                       'etc'
                    ], 
                    [ 'Solar', 'Supernova', 'Quasar', 'Galaxy', 'Blackhole' ], 
                    [ 'Talk', 'Talk & Text', 'Talk, Text & Data' ],
                    [ 'One Year', 'One', 'Two Years', 'Two', 'Three Years', 'Three', 'Four' ]
                ]