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PHP PHP Basics Daily Exercise Program Daily Exercise Program

Kieran Barker
Kieran Barker
15,028 Points
Posted by Kieran Barker
Kieran Barker
15,028 Points

How to approach this additional practice: "Add a skill level to your exercises and display an exercise by skill level"?

On the "Daily Exercise Program" section of the PHP Basics course, Alena lists "Add a skill level to your exercises and display an exercise by skill level as well as day" under additional practice.

How would you approach this task? My thoughts were to add a variable, $skill, and create three exercises for each day depending on the user's skill level: easy, medium, or hard. Then, in my if statement, I would do something like the following:

if ($day == 1 && $skill == 'Easy') {
  echo $exercise1Easy;
}

If that makes sense.

But the issue I have is understanding how to dynamically set the skill level, like the date() function getting the actual current date. In JavaScript, I would use an alert box or something to ask the user for their skill: Easy, Medium, Or Hard. But how can I make this work best for the user's skill, in PHP?

I hope this all makes sense! Thank you :-)

Ben Payne
Ben Payne
1,464 Points

Hey Kieran,

You would capture the dynamic part or user input portion in a form on a web page. Then post that to a script, and handle the input.

You can use variable variables or an array to get the exercise. I would recommend an array for simplicity but I'll show you both:

<?php

$day = 1; // Or some other dynamic day

$skill_level = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'skill_level', FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS);

// Array method
$skills = [
    'easy'   => 'jogging',
    'medium' => 'running',
    'hard'   => 'sprinting',
];

if ($day == 1 && isset($skills[$skill_level])) {
    echo $skills[$skill_level];
}

// Variable variable method

$exerciseEasy = 'jogging';

$exerciseMedium = 'running';

$exerciseHard = 'sprinting';

echo ${'exercise' . ucfirst($skill_level)};

Hopefully that helps.

-Ben