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Introduction to the switch statement
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If you don't have your existing work
space open for this video, go ahead and
0:00
launch it now.
0:04
This switch statement is used for
multiple branching logic.
0:06
So let’s skip over our two way branch and
0:10
pull up the multi-way branch
an example for this video.
0:13
Remember, we signed a value
to a variable called day.
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The we have several conditions for
the value.
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Let's go ahead and
comment out all these lines.
0:25
So we can refer to it later and
it won't interfere with our work.
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Switch is similar in some
ways to an if statement.
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It has parentheses, followed by curly
braces, which holds a block of code.
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The parentheses hold an expression.
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In this case, it's an if statement.
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Let's put in our variable day there,
and unlike an if statement,
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all cases are contained inside one block
of code, marked out with the keyword case.
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Let's write that case now.
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We're saying to the JavaScript
interpreter consider the value
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of day if equals 0,
execute this following block of code.
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When it reaches the break statement,
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it jumps out the entire block of code
to the next set of instructions.
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Let's go ahead and
add the statement we want to run,
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console.log ('Sunday').
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Now that we have one branch here,
let's add another.
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This is easy as simply copying and
pasting another case below.
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Now our program has two branches
which can handle a 0, or a
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1 value in day.
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We can add as many cases
as we would like to.
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We're going to add five more to
handle the rest of the week.
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But first let me show you a common mistake
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you might make when writing
a switch statement.
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I'll remove the break
statement under Sunday.
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If we set the date to equal 0,
and run the code,
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you see it prints both Sunday and Monday.
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If the break is missing,
the statement will fall through
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to the next code, and
unexpected things can happen.
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This is a reason why many developers
consider the switch statement
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to be a bad choice to make when
branching inside a program and
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isn't considered a best practice.
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Let's add back the break.
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And then add the rest of our branches.
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Now we have seven branches for
any possible day of the week.
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But what happens if a day value
is other than 0 through 6?
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The switch statement also
provides a default option
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to catch those possibilities.
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This acts the way an else block acts,
in an if else statement.
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Here's what it looks like.
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Play with this a little bit now and
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see how it works in the same way
as our initial if else statement.
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That's really all there
is to a switch statement.
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If you're testing against
the value of a single variable,
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a switch statement saves you a lot of
typing with a lot of else if conditions.
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Let's move on to another way to branch.
4:15
The ternary operator.
4:17
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