7/14/2021 Flow-Control Statements (Programming PHP)

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2.5. Flow-Control Statements

PHP supports a number of traditional
programming constructs for controlling the flow of execution of a
program.

Conditional statements, such as

if/else and
switch, allow a program to execute different
pieces of code, or none at all, depending on some
condition.
Loops, such as
while and for, support the
repeated execution of particular code.

2.5.1. if

The if
statement checks the truthfulness of
an expression and, if the expression is true, evaluates a statement.
An if statement looks like:

if (expression)
statement

To specify an alternative statement to execute when the expression is

false, use the else
keyword:

if (expression)
statement
else
statement

For example:

if ($user_validated)
echo "Welcome!";
else
echo "Access Forbidden!";

To include more than one statement in an if

statement, use a
block
—a curly brace-enclosed set of
statements:

if ($user_validated) {
echo 'Welcome!";
$greeted = 1;
} else {
echo "Access Forbidden!";
exit;
}

PHP
provides another syntax for blocks in tests and loops. Instead of
enclosing the block of statements in curly braces, end the
if line with a
colon (:) and
use a specific keyword to end the block (endif, in
this case). For example:

if ($user_validated) :
echo "Welcome!";
$greeted = 1;
else :
echo "Access Forbidden!";
exit;
endif;

Other statements described in this chapter also have similar

alternate style syntax (and ending keywords); they can be useful if
you have large
blocks of
HTML inside your statements. For
example:

<?if($user_validated):?>
<table>
<tr>
<td>First Name:</td><td>Sophia</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td><td>Lee</td>
</tr>
</table>
<?else:?>
Please log in.
<?endif?>

Because if
is a statement, you can chain
them:

if ($good)
print('Dandy!');
else
if ($error)
print('Oh, no!');
else
print("I'm ambivalent...");

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Such chains of if statements are common enough
that PHP provides an easier syntax: the elseif
statement. For example, the previous code
can be rewritten as:

if ($good)
print('Dandy!');
elseif ($error)
print('Oh, no!');
else
print("I'm ambivalent...");

The ternary conditional operator

(?:) can be used to shorten simple true/false
tests. Take a common situation such as checking to see if a given
variable is true and printing something if it is. With a normal
if/else statement, it looks
like this:

<td><? if($active) echo 'yes'; else echo 'no'; ?></td>

With the ternary conditional operator, it looks like this:

<? echo '<td>'.($active ? 'yes':'no').'</td>' ?>

Compare the syntax of the two:

if (expression) true_statement else false_statement

(expression) ? true_expression : false_expression

The main
difference here is that the conditional operator is not a statement
at all. This means that it is used on expressions, and the result of
a
complete ternary expression is itself an expression. In the
previous example, the echo statement is inside the
if condition, while when used
with the ternary
operator, it precedes the expression.

2.5.2. switch

It often is the case that the value

of a single variable may determine one of a number of different
choices (e.g., the variable holds the username
and you want to do
something different for each user). The switch
statement is designed for just this situation.

A switch statement is given an expression and

compares its value to all cases in the switch; all statements in a
matching case are executed, up
to the first
break
keyword it finds. If none match, and a default is
given, all statements following the
default
keyword are executed, up to
the first break
keyword encountered.

For example, suppose you have the following:

if ($name == 'ktatroe')
// do something
elseif ($name == 'rasmus')
// do something
elseif ($name == 'ricm')
// do something
elseif ($name == 'bobk')
// do something

You can replace that statement with the following

switch statement:

switch($name) {
case 'ktatroe':
// do something
break;
case 'rasmus':
// do something
break;
case 'ricm':
// do something
break;
case 'bobk':
// do something
break;
}

The alternative syntax for this is:

switch($name):
case 'ktatroe':
// do something
break;
case 'rasmus':
// do something
break;
case 'ricm':
// do something
break;
case 'bobk':
// do something
break;
endswitch;

Because statements are executed from the matching

case label to the next
break keyword, you can combine several cases in a
fall-through. In
the following
example, "yes" is printed when
$name is equal to
"sylvie" or to
"bruno":

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switch ($name) {
case 'sylvie': // fall-through
case 'bruno':
print('yes');
break;
default:
print('no');
break;
}

Commenting the fact that you are using a fall-through case in a

switch is a good idea, so someone
doesn't come along at some point and add a
break, thinking you had forgotten it.

You can specify an optional number of levels for the break keyword to
break out of. In this way, a
break statement can break out of several
levels of nested switch statements. An example of
using break in this manner is shown in the next
section.

2.5.3. while

The
simplest form of loop is the while statement:

while (expression)
statement

If the expression evaluates to

true, the statement is
executed and then the expression is
reevaluated (if it is true, the body of the loop
is
executed, and so on). The loop exits when the
expression evaluates to
false.

As an example, here's some code that adds the whole

numbers from 1 to 10:

$total = 0;
$i = 1;
while ($i <= 10) {
$total += $i;
}

The alternative syntax for while has this

structure:

while (expr):
statement;
...;
endwhile;

For example:

$total = 0;
$i = 1;
while ($i <= 10):
$total += $i;
endwhile;

You can prematurely exit a loop with the

break keyword. In the following code,
$i never reaches a value of 6,
because the loop is stopped
once it reaches 5:

$total = 0;
$i = 1;
while ($i <= 10) {
if ($i == 5)
break; // breaks out of the loop

$total += $i;
$i++;
}

Optionally, you can put a number after the break

keyword, indicating how many levels of loop structures to break out
of. In this way, a
statement buried deep in
nested loops can break out of the outermost
loop. For example:

$i = 0;
while ($i < 10) {
while ($j < 10) {
if ($j == 5)
break 2; // breaks out of two while loops
$j++;
}

$i++;
}

echo $i;
echo $j;
0
5

The continue statement skips ahead to the next test of

the loop condition. As with the break keyword, you can continue
through an optional
number of levels of loop structure:

while ($i < 10) {

while ($j < 10) {

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if ($j = 5)
continue 2; // continues through two levels
$j++;
}
$i++;
}

In this code, $j never has a value above

5, but $i goes through all
values from 0 through 9.

PHP also supports a do

/while
loop, which takes the following form:

do
statement
while (expression)

Use a do/while loop to ensure

that the loop body is executed at least once:

$total = 0;
$i = 1;
do {
$total += $i++;
} while ($i <= 10);

You can use break and continue

statements in a do/while
statement just as in a normal while statement.

The do/while statement is

sometimes used to break out of a block of code when an error
condition occurs. For example:

do {
// do some stuff
if ($error_condition)
break;
// do some other stuff
} while (false);

Because the condition for the loop is false, the

loop is executed only once, regardless of what happens inside the
loop. However, if an error
occurs, the code after the
break is not evaluated.

2.5.4. for

The for statement is similar to the while statement,

except it adds counter
initialization and counter manipulation expressions, and is often
shorter and easier to read than the equivalent
while loop.

Here's a while loop that counts

from 0 to 9, printing each number:

$counter = 0;
while ($counter < 10) {
echo "Counter is $counter\n";
$counter++;
}

Here's the corresponding, more concise

for loop:

for ($counter = 0; $counter < 10; $counter++)

echo "Counter is $counter\n";

The structure of a for statement is:

for (start; condition; increment)

statement

The expression
start is evaluated once, at the beginning
of the for statement. Each time through the loop,
the expression condition is tested.
If it
is true, the body of the loop is executed; if it
is false, the loop ends. The expression
increment is evaluated after the loop body
runs.

The alternative syntax of a for statement is:

for (expr1; expr2; expr3):

statement;
...;
endfor;

This program adds the numbers from 1 to 10 using a

for loop:

$total = 0;
for ($i= 1; $i <= 10; $i++) {
$total += $i;
}

Here's the same loop using the alternate syntax:

$total = 0;
for ($i = 1; $i <= 10; $i++):
$total += $i;
endfor;

You can specify multiple expressions for any of the expressions in a

for statement by separating the expressions with
commas. For example:

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$total = 0;
for ($i = 0, $j = 0; $i <= 10; $i++, $j *= 2) {
$total += $j;
}

You can also leave an expression empty,

signaling that nothing should be done for that phase. In the most
degenerate form, the for statement
becomes an
infinite
loop. You probably don't want to run this example,
as it never stops printing:

for (;;) {
echo "Can't stop me!<br />";
}

In for loops, as in while

loops, you can use the
break
and continue
keywords to end the loop or the current iteration.

2.5.5. foreach

The foreach
statement allows you to iterate over elements in an
array. The two
forms of foreach statement are discussed in Chapter 5. To
loop over an array, accessing each key,
use:

foreach ($array as $current) {

// ...
}

The alternate syntax is:

foreach ($array as $current):

// ...
endforeach;

To loop over an array, accessing both key and value, use:

foreach ($array as $key => $value) {

// ...
}

The alternate syntax is:

foreach ($array as $key => $value):

// ...
endforeach;

2.5.6. declare

The declare statement allows you to specify execution directives for a

block of code. The structure of a
declare statement is:

declare (directive)
statement

Currently, there is only one declare form, the

ticks
directive. Using it, you can specify how frequently (measured roughly
in number of code
statements) a tick function registered with
register_tick_function( ) is called. For example:

register_tick_function("some_function");

declare(ticks = 3) {
for($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
// do something
}
}

In this code, some_function( ) is called after

every third statement is executed.

2.5.7. exit and return

The exit statement

ends execution of the script as soon as it is reached. The
return statement returns from a function or (at
the top level of the
program) from the script.

The exit statement takes an optional value. If

this is a number, it's the exit status of the
process. If it's a string, the value is printed
before the
process terminates. The exit( )
construct is an alias for die(
):

$handle = @mysql_connect("localhost", $USERNAME, $PASSWORD);

if (!$handle) {
die("Could not connect to database");
}

This is more commonly written as:

$handle = @mysql_connect("localhost", $USERNAME, $PASSWORD)

or die("Could not connect to database");

See Chapter 3 for more information on using the

return statement in functions.

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2.4. Expressions and Operators 2.6. Including Code

Copyright © 2003 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved.

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