Simplifying with a Function

Now that you've had a chance to try this for yourself, 0:00 I'm going to show you how I solved this challenge. 0:02 When it comes to programming, there's always more than one way to do something. 0:06 If you solve this challenge in a different way than what 0:10 I'm going to show you, great. 0:13 Now you'll have two ways to accomplish this. 0:16 And, we'll be able to compare those two options when you run into another 0:18 similar situation. 0:22 >> In the functions.php file, 0:23 I'm going to start by writing a new function to retrieve an array of genres. 0:26 Let's add this just after our single item array. 0:32 Then we can reference that function when we needed. 0:34 We'll name this genre_array. 0:44 For this challenge we want to pull all genre group by category. 0:50 But let's make this function a little more flexible. 0:54 We may want to use this to retrieve a single category. 0:56 So let's set up an optional parameter for category. 1:00 Then, if we want to select only the genre in a certain category, we can. 1:10 It's helpful to write things in such a way that their use can be extended 1:15 in the future. 1:18 This helps you out later on. 1:19 We want to make sure that our category variable is lowercase. 1:22 So let's add that to the top of our function. 1:25 Next, we need to include our connection.php file. 1:38 Now we're ready to start our try catch block. 1:48 We'll start with the sequel variable. 1:52 This will be our main select. 1:58 We'll select genre and 2:00 category from genres. 2:08 We also need to join this. 2:15 We'll join our genre's category on genre_id. 2:27 Now let's get the results for all the genre. 2:41 We also want to order by genre, so let's add that here. 2:48 When concatenating a string make sure there are spaces where needed. 2:56 You can always add more spaces without causing an issue, but 3:00 no spaces will run words together and cause things not to work. 3:04 Finally we need to execute our results. 3:10 Now, we can add our conditional for the category. 3:18 If (!empty($category)) {. 3:21 We'll duplicate this prepare line for our else statement. 3:30 Now we can add our where clause. 3:39 We now need our bind statement to replace our placeholder with our category. 4:02 This is a string, so we'll use the string-filter. 4:21 We also have our else. 4:24 And our execute is down below our else. 4:26 So we're ready to finish off our try and at our catch block. 4:29 Now I want to create an associative array. 4:48 With the key being the category and 4:50 the value set to an inner array of category genre. 4:53 We'll use the fetch within a while loop so we can format the results the way we want. 4:57 Let's start by initializing our array. 5:02 Then we can start the while loop. 5:11 We'll use our row to pull our category. 5:36 This will be our key. 5:44 Now we need to add an inner array. 5:46 This will add each genre to the appropriate category. 5:55 We're now ready to return our genres. 5:59 Now we can use this function to build our drop down. 6:06 So let's open suggest.php. 6:09 First we need to include our function.php file. 6:13 Now we're ready to modify our genre drop down. 6:24 Let's remove all the items except one opt group and one option. 6:34 We'll use those as templates. 6:40 Before our optgroup, let's open a php block. 6:59 We'll move this back a little. 7:07 Now let's start by creating a genre array. 7:12 We'll use our genre_array function. 7:18 These can have the same name because one is a variable and one is a function. 7:23 Next we'll start looping through the array with a for 7:27 each loop making sure that we grab our key for the category. 7:31 Let's move this back so it's easier to read. 7:51 We can then open our opt group, using our category. 7:56 We need to escape our double quotes and change books to category. 8:06 We need another for each loop to loop through the options. 8:17 This time we don't care about the key. 8:20 Now we can use option in our option template. 8:28 We don't need to open a php block, because we're already in a php block. 8:45 So let's close this line and we're ready for our if. 8:50 Instead of action here. 8:57 We also want to use our option. 8:59 So if our genre is set and 9:02 if genre equals our option then we want to show this as selected. 9:04 We're ready to close our inner for each. 9:25 We can then end our opt group. 9:30 And finally we'll finish our outer for each and end our php block. 9:39 Now let's preview this in the browser. 9:49 Our genre drop down is there and if we choose a genre and 9:56 hit send our genre is selected. 10:01 Fantastic. 10:05 We've moved from all this code 10:07 to this code using a function that connects to the database. 10:09 Although this didn't change the functionality of our site, 10:14 now when we add or 10:17 update genres in our database, our suggest form will be updated automatically. 10:18