Flow control using if statements - php

Question

I have 300+ rows of data that i am getting from various users of our cloud application. Users are using the web application on mobile and on computers.Since we are using responsive designs,it interests us we know what the users are using to access the application.
We are interested in the common known manufacturers like so
<?php
$dbh = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=qs', 'qs_root', 'lepasswort');
$fc = $dbh->prepare("select str from test_str");
$fc->execute();
$i = 0;
while($result = $fc->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){
$one = $result['str'];
$cmd = "/usr/bin/perl str_processor.pl '$one' ";
$output = shell_exec($cmd);
$arr = explode( ',', $output);
$the_type = $arr[0];
if($the_type == 'samsung'){
echo 'samsung';
}
if($the_type == 'nokia'){
echo 'samsung';
}
if($the_type == 'iphone'){
echo 'samsung';
}
if($the_type == 'ipad'){
echo 'samsung';
}
else{
echo 'exception';
}
}
?>
The known brands are samsung,nokia,iphone etc.
However,there are many brands that are not well known and we want to ignore them.
My script looks like i have written above,only that i have left the actual code between my if's.
When i run the script,i get exception meaning none of the code inside ifs is getting executed. Is if the right method here?.
Note:
I have checked and counter-checked my pl script and its correct so it cannot be it.

Answer 1

You must use elseif otherwise you will obtain "exception" everytime the terminal is not an ipad. All the conditions are mutually exclusive.
if ($the_type == 'samsung') {
echo 'samsung';
} elseif ($the_type == 'nokia') {
echo 'nokia';
} elseif ($the_type == 'iphone') {
echo 'iphone';
} elseif ($the_type == 'ipad') {
echo 'ipad';
} else {
echo 'exception';
}
An other way to do it, is to use an array:
$models = ['samsung', 'nokia', 'iphone', 'ipad'];
if (in_array($the_type, $models))
echo $the_type;
else
echo 'exception';
If you don't get any result except "exception", check $the_type with var_dump to be sure it contains what you hope.