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PHP Tutorial for Wordpress Users – Page 6

Variables in Conditional Statements

Now it’s time to combine the two preceding sections. You learned above that you can assign $myVar the value Howdy! like so:

<?php $myVar = 'Howdy!'; ?>

But what if you want to test whether $myVar already has the value Howdy!? To check a variables value, use two == instead of one =, like this:

<?php
// THE RIGHT WAY
if ($myVar == 'Howdy'){
   echo 'Howdy!';
}

// THE WRONG WAY
if ($myVar = 'Howdy'){
   echo 'Howdy!';
} ?>

The first example is correct. The second will not work as expected. In the second example, the if is testing whether or not PHP is successfully able to assign the value of Howdy to $myVar, which will always be true.


 

9 comments »

1
Chris contributes
at 1:23 pm on December 5, 2007 #

Can this be used to display a different chunk of sidebar content depending on what page number you are on?

2
Thus saith Adam
at 6:20 pm on December 5, 2007 #

Yes, PHP can be used for that. See conditional tags.

3
gadget remarks
at 8:33 am on January 7, 2008 #

I know I need to add the PHP file to the same directory as the page containing the PHP script but which FTP directory does Wordpress store the posts in pls?

4
Thus saith Adam
at 9:44 am on January 7, 2008 #

@gadget: For general WP support, please use the WP support forums. The short answer: WP uses MySQL, not PHP, to store data.

5
at 8:50 am on January 30, 2008 #

Hello,
If the directory I am accessing from the site contains both index.php and index.htm ,What happens?

6
Thus saith Adam
at 8:55 am on January 30, 2008 #

That’s not really a PHP question. It depends on your server configuration. But why ask? Just try it and see what happens.

7
KVS setty remarks
at 9:23 am on January 30, 2008 #

Hello,
If I use single quote to assign a string to a variable in the PHP,Can I define another variable with a double quote? I mean, can I mix and match single and double quotes according to my convince in the same PHP snippet or should I stick to only one type of delimiters throughout the snippet?
Thanks a lot for the quick reply.

8
KVS setty remarks
at 9:57 am on January 30, 2008 #

Hello,
Nice tutorial! simple,easy, neat, to the point.And the best part is it inspired me to learn a new web language.Thanks a lot

9
Thus saith Adam
at 10:08 am on January 30, 2008 #

Thanks. Regarding your question about quotes, you can switch back and forth all you want. But again… why ask? Just try it and see what happens. That’s the way I learned PHP.

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