Monthly Archives: October 2008

Using short if statement in programming

Posted on by
12

In many programing languages it is possible to shorten if statements using what’s called the ternary operator. It is sometimes referred as the “one line if statement” or the “short if statement”. This can help at times to produce cleaner code, however use this operator wisely as it is not always best to be used for more complicated statements.

PHP Example of an if statement

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

if($nFoo > 0)
{
   echo "I'm at the work.";
}
else
{
   echo "I'm at home.";
}

PHP Example using the ternary operator

1

echo $nFoo > 0 ? "I'm at the work." : "I'm at home.";

The expression (expr1) ? (expr2) : (expr3) evaluates to expr2 if expr1 evaluates to TRUE, and expr3 if expr1 evaluates to FALSE.

Source: Wikipedia on Ternary Operator
Source: PHP Manual: Comparison Operators

How To – Pad Zeros (prefix or suffix)

Posted on by
Reply

Background Knowledge

There is certain times when one needs to pad zeros to the beginning (prefix) or ending (suffix) of a integer.

Below is what I came up with for a solution in JavaScript. All one has to do is call the function with the integer value, the length (integer) of the padding and position to place the padding. Use “start” for the prefix or use “end” for the suffix. Please lets see some comments on how to improve this small block of code.

Solution

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

function fnPaddingZeros(nInterger,nPaddingLength,szPaddingPos)
{
	//convert integer to string
	nInterger=nInterger.toString();
	while(nInterger.length < nPaddingLength)
	{
		if(szPaddingPos == "start") { nInterger = '0' + nInterger; }
		else if(szPaddingPos == "end") { nInterger = nInterger + '0'; }
	}
	return nInterger;
}

How To – Convert MySQL Timestamp/Datetime to Unix Timestamp

Posted on by
3

Background Knowledge

Since MySQL v4.1 timestamp and datetime data types are formatted “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS”. Prior to MySQL v4.1 the timestamp was formatted as YYYYMMDDHHMMSS” and datetime formatted as “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS”. Refer to MySQL Reference Manual for further details.

The Unix timestamp differs from MySQL. Unix’s timestamp is a integer value of seconds since January 1, 1970. For further explanation of Unix timestamps refer to Wikiepedia or UnixTimestamp.com.

Solutions

In MySQL you can use Unix_Timestamp() function.

Query Example: SELECT Unix_Timestamp(Date_Entered) FROM Foo;

Using PHP you can use strtotime() function.

PHP Example: $nUnixTimestamp = strtotime($nTimestamp);