Writing simpler conditions

[justintadlock]

I'm looking over includes/template-tags/helpers.php right now and see a lot of if/else code that looks like this:

if(is_object($tour_operator) && isset($tour_operator->options[$post_type]) && isset($tour_operator->options[$post_type]['disable_single'])){
	return true;
}else{
	return false;
}

That's perfectly valid code. However, it's more complicated than it needs to be. Remember that conditionals are going to return either true or false. There's no need for the if or else. You merely need one line of code to do the above.

return is_object( $tour_operator ) && isset( $tour_operator->options[$post_type] ) && isset( $tour_operator->options[$post_type]['disable_single'] );

Here's a different type of example from the same file:

if(count($children) > 0){
	return $children;
}else{
	return false;
}

Write it as (variable always goes on the right, by the way):

if ( 0 < count( $children ) ) {
	return $children;
}

return false;

There's no need for the else statement there.

A good rule of thumb in programming is that if you have an else in your code, you most likely don't need it.

I didn't want to point out any specific line numbers and files. This sort of thing is done quite a bit in the plugin. It's just extra, unnecessary code. When working with larger plugins, the less code, the better.

It's not something I'd try to fix all at once. Just keep this tip in mind while working on the plugin. If you come across something, fix it then.

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