How to design the navigation in a php tool/website? - php

Question

I'm designing a semi-basic tool in PHP, I have more experience server side, and not in PHP.
My tool contains 10-15 pages, and I am doing the navigation between them with the $_GET parameter.
In my code I have many if statements that look like:
if(isset[param1] && !isset[param2] && .....&& !isset[paramN]){
// code
}
You will agree with me, it's ugly, right?
Is it "how we do it" in PHP? or is there some kind of design pattern / functions for navigation in a PHP website?
Edit: To be clearer, what I want to know is: Is the proper way to design the navigation is with plenty of $_GET variables?

Answer 1

To avoid a huge if else statement try a switch statement:
$param1 = 'something';
switch (true){
case isset($param1):
echo "PARAM 1 is set";
break;
case isset($param2):
echo "PARAM 2 is set";
break;
default:
echo "None set";
}
And to answer your edit - Yes, you can use _GET variables for navigation and it is normal.

Answer 2

Actually the solution to this problem is a little bit complicated, than it might seem at first glance. And you need to implement a handler for that, since you're looking a cleanest way of handling GET parameters and invoking a code fragment.
In your case, your final API, should look like this (since you were asking for the design, not the for implementation):
$nav = new Nav($_GET);
$nav->whenSet('param1', 'param2')->andNotSet('param3')->then(function(){
});
$nav->whenSet('param3')->andNotSet('param1', 'param2')->then(function(){
});
// Or a simpler and shorter way
$nav->register($existingKeys, $nonExistingKeys, function(){
});
Another option you have is to use a routing mechanism. Most PHP frameworks provide this functionality. They all support optional route fragments, so you can handle parameters only defining one route path, like this /page/? (? - means optional).

Answer 3

This is my suggestion add conditions in an array and than use in_array()
echo in_array($yourVar, array('abc', 'def', 'hij', 'klm', 'nop'))
? True
: false;
UPDATE:
$get = "abc";
$navigation = array(
"abc"=>"yourneed",
"def"=>"yourneed2",
"ghi"=>"yourneed3",
);
foreach($navigation as $key => $value){
if($key == $get){
echo $value;
}
}
One more solution you can define routes also.
Same as CI and YII.

Answer 4

(I'm not using switch but you should definitely try that, and try using break between cases)
I'm using this at the moment, it seems to avoid mass-IFfing:
if (!$_GET) {
homePageFunction();
}elseif($_GET) {
contentPagesFunction($_GET['p']);
}
I have a menuer() function that outputs rel paths to content 'things' in links like:
<a href='?p=$relPath'>$name</a>
Although I could probably use different notation to tidy it further... Untested but like this:
if (!$_GET) homePageFunction();
elseif ($_GET) contentPagesFunction($_GET['p']);