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Daily Exercise Program

6:24 with Alena Holligan

In this video we'll take the concepts we've learned to develop a daily exercise program. We'll use variables and conditionals to show us a different exercise each day.

Teacher's Notes
Video Transcript
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Starter Code for Daily Exercises

// store each exercise in a string variable
$exercise1 = 'Display "Hello World!"';
$exercise2 = 'Convert Pounds to Kilograms';
$exercise3 = 'Convert Kilograms to Pounds';
$exercise4 = 'Convert Miles to Kilometers';
$exercise5 = 'Convert Kilometers to Miles';
$exercise6 = 'Month long string of the day';
$exercise7 = 'String of the day with levels';

// create a variable containing the day of the week
// use an if statement to test for the day of the week
// display the corresponding exercise string

Documentation

The date() function returns a string formatted according to the given format string.

'N' returns a numeric representation of the day of the week 1 (for Monday) through 7 (for Sunday)

To see all formatting options, visit the PHP Documentation for date().

Additional Practice

Perform other conversions or mathematical computations.
Add a skill level to your exercises and display an exercise by skill level as well as day.
Create a quote of the day or
Show a greeting based on the time of day.

We're starting the daily exercise program. 0:00

So let's create a new file and name it exercise.php. 0:02

Again, we need to start the file using the opening and closing php tags. 0:11

Like we did for unit converter let's add comments to document the steps needed for 0:17

this program. 0:21

First we need to store each exercise in a string variable, 0:24

then we'll need to create a variable containing the day of the week. 0:31

Then we'll use an if statement 0:42

to test for the day of the week. 0:47

And finally we'll display the corresponding exercise string. 0:54

So the first thing we need to do is store each exercise in a string. 1:03

So let's create our first string. 1:07

We'll call this $exercise1. 1:09

We're going to set this equal to a string. 1:13

You're probably expecting us to write a list of physical exercises. 1:16

While we could do that in the exact same way, 1:20

I thought it would be more fun to use programming exercises. 1:22

So for exercise one, let's use the first exercise we performed for this course. 1:27

Display hello world. 1:31

Now let's create six more exercises for the rest of the week. 1:38

I'm going to paste these in instead of typing them all out. 1:42

I'll put them in the teacher's notes for you as well, but 1:45

feel free to use any exercises you'd like. 1:47

Now that we have our exercises ready, 1:51

we need to create a variable containing the day of the week. 1:53

I'll call this Day. 1:59

This could be a string with a day name or just an integer for the day number. 2:03

I'm going to go with integer. 2:07

We could set the variable manually and we will for testing, but 2:10

we want this to be automated based on the actual day of the week. 2:14

PHP has another function we can use for this called date. 2:19

Date returns today's date in the format we specify in the parenthesis. 2:25

Passing in the upper case n within quotes 2:30

will give us the numeric representation of the day of the week. 2:34

One for Monday through seven for Sunday. 2:39

Let's var_dump day and run our script just to see. 2:43

As you can see it gives us the numeric representation of today's day of the week. 2:59

Today is Wednesday. 3:05

Great. 3:07

Now we can use that in an if statement to check the day of the week and 3:07

return a corresponding exercise. 3:11

If our day equals one. 3:17

If this is Monday. 3:23

Then we want to echo $exercise1. 3:25

Let's duplicate this for each day of the week 3:32

And then let's replace these numbers. 3:41

Okay, let's try this out. 4:04

It only displays the exercise that corresponds to that day of the week. 4:08

Convert kilograms to pounds we notice is exercise 3. 4:13

This is the third day of the week. 4:17

This works like we want, but by creating separate if statements, 4:20

we force PHP to evaluate each statement. 4:24

If the first statement is true, we know that the other statements must be false. 4:28

So let's combine these statements using the elseif. 4:33

Elseif day two, 4:35

elseif day three, day four, day five. 4:42

Day 6 and day 7. 4:51

Let's remove this far dump. 4:57

And run the script again. 5:02

Great now we see just the 1 exercise. 5:05

Let's change day just so we can see if this is actually working. 5:09

We'll change day manually to equal six. 5:15

And now let's run this code again. 5:21

We now see exercise six. 5:25

Month long string of the day. 5:28

Great job working with strings and creating your second program. 5:31

You've now used all the basic scalar type variables that PHP offers, 5:34

boolean, integer, float, and string. 5:39

You've also used many different operators to store, retrieve, and 5:43

manipulate the values in those variables. 5:47

You've also learned conditionals to tell the script how you want to use that data 5:50

and control the flow of your script. 5:55

Before you move on, try practicing some of the skills you've been learning. 5:58

Perform other conversions or mathematical computations. 6:01

Add a skill level to your exercises and 6:05

display an exercise by skill level as well as day. 6:07

Create a quote of the day or show a greeting based on the time of day. 6:11

In the final section of this course, we'll show how to work with PHP on a website so 6:14

that you can start sharing your newly learned skills with the world. 6:20

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