In my last post, I talked about if statements. I mentioned that they evaluate a statement and return a boolean (true/false). Then, based upon the result, some code is run (or not run). The examples I displayed were simple, single IF statements, but what if we have more complex questions to evaluate? Well, we can do that. One solution is the else statement…
[code lang=”js”]
// If/else statement
if(thisVar === thatVar){
// Do something
} else {
// Do something else
}
[/code]
As you can see from the above code sample, we can evaluate a statement as to whether it is true or false. We can then have the code do one thing if the result is true and something else if it is false. This is very handy.
But what if we have multiple conditions to test? This is where the else if comes in to play…
[code lang=”js”]
// if/else if statement
if(thisOne === thatOne){
// Do something
} else if (thisTwo === thatTwo){
// Do something different
}
[/code]
So we can test multiple condition statements in one code block. One tip…you might want to end you IF/ELSE IF statements with an ELSE section to act as a ‘catch all’.
[code lang=”js”]
// if/else if/else statement
if(thisOne === thatOne){
// Do something
} else if (thisTwo === thatTwo){
// Do something different
} else {
// Do this if all else fails
}
[/code]
Doing this will help ensure your code is protected and more ‘foolproof’ against any possible unknown condition statement results.
Happy Coding!
Clay Hess
