Need a neat thing with DEFINE

like a variables variable

[mcibor]

I use a smarty template system, where the language is stored in defined vals and I just pass them to the appropriate variable:

one file:
define("ERROR", "You can't enter here");

second file: $smarty -> assign(array("Error" => ERROR));

Everything runs smoothly.
However now, I have 2x4 texts, that I want to display randomly
TM1 - first text for a man
TM2 - second text for a man...
TM4 - fourth text for a man
TF1 - first text for a girl... etc

How can I pass the values of define? If the defined were variables I would just write:

${"T".$gender.$i} ===> $TM1 - $TF4

Is there a way to do this with defined as well?

Best regards
Michal Cibor

PS. I just don't want to have 8 ifs/cases
PS2. Sorry for the spelling mistake in the title. It should be "neat" there!

[madmac]

Do your constant defines:

define('TM1', '...');
....
define('TF4', '...');

Use constant() to get the right one:

$var = constant('T' . $gender . $i);

[ergophobe]

Shouldn't you be generating the random value PHP side and then just passing that to Smarty? So you woudl use madmac's code and then

define ('TEXT_RAND', $var);

then

$smarty -> assign(array("TextRand" => TEXT_RAND));

If you need to name a constant on the fly and then define it, that's fairly easy with eval()

$gender = rand(0,1);
$index = rand(1,4);
$gender_ar = array('M', 'F');
eval("define('T" . $gender_ar[$gender] . $index ."', '" . $text . "');");

You can do that in a loop also and define them all that way

$text_array('M' => array('first male text', 'second male text'), 'F'=>array('first female text'));

foreach ($text_array as $gender_key => $gender_array)
{
$i=1;
foreach ($gender_array as $text)
{
eval("define('T" . $gender_key . $i . "', '" . $text . "');");
$i++;
}
}

Not sure I understand excatly though, because I don't know Smarty.

[mcibor]

Thanks guys!

I was making a "brothel" for a game, and had some texts (not random) that I wanted to show randomly (so people won't get bored so fast).

Therefore I'll use MadMac's way!
Thanks Ergophobe!

See you round! However I'm leaving for a week to Warsaw, so see you on next weekend!

Michal Cibor