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Decision Tree - Must be a better way...?

Answer 1

+4 A:

At first you could take the lines

$switch_type = $_GET['st'];
$switch_speed = $_GET['ss'];

out of the conditions, they are the same everywhere. Just do it once before or after the if/elses.

Furthermore I see, that each sub-part of $a2 depends on a specific condition. Maybe you can construct it the following (pseudo-code) way:

...
//$a2 always starts the same
$a2 = "answer";

// Type of line
switch($_GET['st']) {
  case "managed":
    $a2 = $a2 + "-left"; break;
  case "unmanaged":
    $a2 = $a2 + "-right"; break;
  case "smart":
    $a2 = $a2 + "-mid"; break;
}

// speed of line
switch($_GET['ss']) {
  case 100:
    $a2 = $a2 + "-left"; break;
  case 1000:
    $a2 = $a2 + "-right"; break;
}
....

After that $a2 should hold your combined values like 'answer-left-right' and so on. A similar approach could be done with $a1 but I chose $a2 for the example as it's better suited here.

Kosi2801 2009-11-09 14:05:25

+1. CSS can be refactored in similar manner (margin-top:10px; width:50%; are repeated multiple times)

artemb 2009-11-09 14:17:21

problem is the positioning of the next branch of the tree once the selection has been made...currently done using different amounts of padding-left in the css...in my example posted I have to use varying amounts of padding-left to get the possitioning just right...

Bift 2009-11-09 14:27:52

that is why there is .left-left , .left-right and .left-mid in the css

Bift 2009-11-09 14:29:45

You could use a similar algorithm to calculate the padding for the css and write out the used style directly into the div-tag using the style-attribute.

Kosi2801 2009-11-11 18:21:18

Answer 2

A:

I've used associative arrays for this in the past.

In your case, you should be parsing $_GET["st"] & $_GET["ss"] at the top of the script. So you can grab those into two variables $st and $ss (and you should be doing validation on them as well!). Taken that as given, you can come up with something like:

$st_choices = array (
    'managed'    => array (
        '1000'         =>  array (
            'key1'          => 'val1',
            'key2'          => 'val2'
         );
     ),
     'a1'        => 'answer-left',
     'a2'        => 'another-value'

     /** ... **/
);

Then, you use a lookup function to access the array.

Adding more elements means simply adding to the array in the format above, instead of adding more if/else if/else branches.

function return_details($st, $ss) {
    $vals = array();

    if (isset($st_choices[$st]) && isset($st_choices[$st][$ss])) {
        $vals['a1'] = $st_choices[$st]["a1"];
        $vals['a2'] = $st_choices[$st]["a2"];
        $vals['key1'] = $vals[$st][$ss]['key1'];
    }
}

Depending on your situation, you may need to wrap those assignments in isset() also.

Phil 2009-11-09 14:07:56

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Decision Tree - Must be a better way...?

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