What is a more elegant solution to these nested if/elseif statements?

Question

I\'m building a website that contains users with user profiles. Many of the fields in the profile are optional.

There is an opportunity for a lot of user-generate

Answer 1

It is not much, but because $name it is at least NULL:

public function nameify($names = NULL) {
    $name = 'NULL';
    if (!empty($names)) {
        if (!empty($names['display_name'])) {
            $name = $names['display_name'];
        } elseif (!empty($names['first_name'])) {
            $name = $names['first_name'];
            if (!empty($names['last_name'])) {
                $name .= ' ' . $names['last_name'];
            }
        } elseif (!empty($names['last_name'])) {
            $name = $names['last_name'];
        }

        if ($name=='NULL' && !empty($names['id'])) {
            $name = 'user' . $names['id'];
        } 
    } 
    return $name;
}

Answer 2

Somewhat less readable, but effective):

list($idx,$name) = array_shift(array_filter(array(
    $names['display_name'],
    implode(' ',array_filter(array($names['first_name'],$names['last_name']))),
    'user'.$names['id'];
    )));

Answer 3

A State machine works very nicely for involved logic like that. It's very simple to implement as well (using a switch statement).

Answer 4

I would propose this:

public function nameify($names = null) {
    if(empty($names))
        return null;

    if(!empty($names['display_name']))
        return $names['display_name'];

    if(!empty($names['first_name'])) {
        $name = $names['first_name'];
        if (!empty($names['last_name'])) {
            $name .= ' ' . $names['last_name'];
        }
        return $name;
    }

    if(!empty($names['id]))
        return 'user' . $names['id'];

    return null;
}

Answer 5

I'm not sure that my version would be simplier, but here it is:

public function nameify($names = null) {
    $result = array();

    if( !empty($names['display_name']) ) {
        array_push($result,$names['display_name']);
    } else {
        if( !empty($names['first_name']) ) {
            array_push($result, $names['first_name']);
        }
        if( !empty($names['last_name']) ) {
            array_push($result, $names['last_name']);
        }
    }

    if( empty($result) && !empty($names['id']) ) {
        array_push($result, 'user'.$names['id']);
    }

    return (empty($result) ? 'NULL' : implode(' ', $result));
}

Answer 6

I'd go with:

if( empty($names['display_name']) ) {
    $name = $names['first_name'] . ' ' $names['last_name'];
else
    $name = $names['display_name'];

$name = trim($name);
if( empty($name) ) 
    $name = 'user'.$names['id'];
if( empty($name) ) 
    $name = 'NULL';

This would be the 'core logic'... there will need to be other checks like $names != NULL or something..