IF statement gives wrong outcome when 1 string is being searched multiple times

Question

So i have these two strings:

$title = 'Chair Material Suede Black';

$title = 'Chair Material Suede Red';

This is a snippet from my PHP function:

elseif (stripos($title, 'Suede') !== false) {
    if (stripos($title, 'Red') !== false) {
        return 'Red Suede Chair';
    }
    else {return "TEMP_Category";}
}

The function continues, and 50 lines down there is this code:

elseif (stripos($title, 'Suede') !== false) {
        if (stripos($title, 'Black') !== false) {
            return 'Black Suede Chair';
        }
        else {return "TEMP_Category";}
    }

However, the string 'Chair Material Suede Black' ALWAYS returns 'TEMP_Category', because the search for 'Red' and 'Suede' is done prior to the Black one.

Is there any way to let it pass to the 'black' search?

Probably because it's hitting the suede/red block, first. Add the Black check inside of the first Suede check, with an `else if`. — aynber, Oct 10 '17 at 14:23
`if (hasSuede) { if(isRed){return "red";} elseif(isBlue) {return "blue";} return "Suede"; }` — Marian, Oct 10 '17 at 14:23

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 10 '17 at 14:23

Combine the two checks:

elseif (stripos($title, 'Suede') !== false && stripos($title, 'Red') !== false) {

And move the else with TEMP_Category to the end of the checks.

elseif (stripos($title, 'Suede') !== false && stripos($title, 'Red') !== false) {
    return 'Red Suede Chair';
} elseif (stripos($title, 'Suede') !== false && stripos($title, 'Black') !== false) {
    return 'Black Suede Chair';
} else {
    return "TEMP_Category";
}

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 10 '17 at 14:26

However, the string 'Chair Material Suede Black' ALWAYS returns 'TEMP_Category', because the search for 'Red' and 'Suede' is done prior to the Black one.

Just for clarity that's simply because you're using elseif (stripos($title, 'Suede') !== false). So you will never reach the second (btw. identical) condition. PHP will skip every other elseif after a first matching condition. And because the first one will return "TEMP_Category" (because it's not Red) you get the wrong result.

Accept the answer from @Fenton because it's how you can solve it ;-)

IF statement gives wrong outcome when 1 string is being searched multiple times

2 Answers2