Joomla PHP Template Logic

Question

I'm in the process of building some templates for Joomla, and although it all works as desired, I can't help thinking that there has to be a more elegant way to do this in PHP than my current approach. For the record, I'm still reasonably new to PHP!

Using collapsible module positions, I need to assign various CSS classes to a div depending on how many modules are published on a particular row. The code I wrote is below;

    if (($footer1 != "0") && ($footer2 == "0") && ($footer3 == "0")) {
    $footerWidth = 'full';
    }
    elseif (($footer1 == "0") && ($footer2 != "0") && ($footer3 == "0")) {
    $footerWidth = 'full';
    }
    elseif (($footer1 == "0") && ($footer2 == "0") && ($footer3 != "0")) {
    $footerWidth = 'full';
    }
    elseif (($footer1 != "0") && ($footer2 != "0") && ($footer3 == "0")) {
    $footerWidth = 'one_half';
    }
    elseif (($footer1 != "0") && ($footer2 == "0") && ($footer3 != "0")) {
    $footerWidth = 'one_half';
    }
    elseif (($footer1 == "0") && ($footer2 != "0") && ($footer3 != "0")) {
    $footerWidth = 'one_half';
    }
    else {
    $footerWidth = 'one_third';
    }

I then use the following code in the template itself to check for modules published;

    <?php if ($footer1 > 0) : ?>
                <div class="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($footerWidth); ?>">
                    <jdoc:include type="modules" name="footer1" style="html5" />
                </div>
    <?php endif; ?>
    <?php if ($footer2 > 0) : ?>
                <div class="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($footerWidth); ?>">
                    <jdoc:include type="modules" name="footer2" style="html5" />
                </div>
    <?php endif; ?>
    <?php if ($footer3 > 0) : ?>
                <div class="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($footerWidth); ?>">
                    <jdoc:include type="modules" name="footer3" style="html5" />
                </div>
    <?php endif; ?>

Can anyone suggest / recommend a better approach? It just seems like a lot of code for a simple function.

Answer 1

I'm afraid I don't know what $footer1, $footer2, and $footer3 are. Either in PHP nor in HTML. These are just not that descriptive and I can't imagine a need for 3 footers, nor why their values would be numerical. I can imagine say, a copyright, bottom_nav_bar, and other similar things that might be mistaken as footers. But I digress, this is probably just example code.

Also, I can't tell if its just CR's code indentation is off again, or if you really have all those if/else statements and their contents on the same level. If the later, please indent your code whenever you enter a statement, loop, function, etc.. as it will make reading your code so much easier. If the former, you can ignore this part.

Now, on to the actual code. This suggestion is pretty similar to Jared's, and I agree with what I think he was driving at. These should really be set as booleans. However, there's probably a better way to get them as such without needing to typecast, such as changing them at the source. If their current values are important and that is not an option, maybe typecasting can't be helped. But depending on what the range of these values are, maybe it won't be necessary after all. Assuming it is either a value of 0 or 1, then you could do the following.

$footers = compact( 'footer1', 'footer2', 'footer3' );//get footers into array
sort( $footers );//sort array so it is in numerical order
$code = implode( '', $footers );//combine array to string for code to test

switch( $code ) {
    case '001': $footerWidth = 'full'; break;
    case '011': $footerWidth = 'one_half'; break;
    default: $footerWidth = 'one_third'; break;
}

This can be adapted for any single digit number (1-9), but I'm assuming the range is as above. Again, this can probably be simplified if I knew the application to which it was being applied. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Something somewhat confusing is the comparison to of each $footer# to the string '0' then later comparing it to greater than integer 0. This is practically the definition of weakly typed languages. If you know what $footer# variables actually contain you might be able to simplify this, but here is a fully functioning replacement to the first code block.

One could simplify this a bit, but the core concepts are there. '0' casts to False, and True casts to 1. There are plenty of other ways to accomplish the same thing, especially if you have significantly more incoming $footer#'s, or if they are stored in something iteratable like an array.

//$footer1 = '10';
//$footer2 = '-5';
//$footer3 = '0';

$footer1Bool = (bool) $footer1;
$footer2Bool = (bool) $footer2;
$footer3Bool = (bool) $footer3;

$footer1Int = (int) $footer1Bool;
$footer2Int = (int) $footer2Bool;
$footer3Int = (int) $footer3Bool;

$footerCombined = $footer1Int + $footer2Int + $footer3Int;

if ( $footerCombined >= 3 ) {
    $footerWidth = 'one_third';
} else if ( $footerCombined == 2 ) {
    $footerWidth = 'one_half';
} else {
    $footerWidth = 'full';
}