PHP —

Adding calculations to the result presentation

Often data that is displayed to the user isn't stored directly in the database. For example, the total of an order placed by the user isn't stored. Instead, the following pieces of information are stored: the quantity of each item ordered, the item's price, the delivery cost, and any discount applied. From these, calculating and displaying the total requires some mathematics.

Why isn't such data stored? The answer is usually that it is redundant: storing it adds no more information to the database. The down side is that you need calculations to recreate output when it is needed. In this section, this is illustrated with a simple example that shows the per-bottle saving when a user purchases more than a dozen bottles.

Returning to the script in Example 4-10, having produced a complete heading that now includes the wine variety, we produce the wine review in the script as before. However, rather than finishing with a simple bottle cost and case_cost, we do some calculations that show users any savings through buying a case:

$dozen_saving = $row["cost"] - ($row["case_cost"]/12);
if ($dozen_saving > 0)
              printf("Save <b>%-.2f</b> per bottle
              when buying a dozen\n", $dozen_saving);

The element $row["cost"] is the cost of a single bottle, and $row["case_cost"] is the cost of a case. Since a case contains 12 bottles, it follows that the cost of 1 bottle in the case is $row["case_cost"]/12. The difference between the price of a single bottle and the price of bottle that comes in a case is then:

$row["cost"]-($row["case_cost"]/12)

The result is stored in $dozen_saving.

A saving is printed out only if there is one; that is, when $dozen_saving is greater than zero. In the case where buying a dozen bottles at once costs the same as 12 separate purchases (or maybe more!), nothing is shown. printf is used in preference to echo, so that you can include the formatting string %-.2f to show exactly two decimal places (that is, the cents of the $dozen_saving).

There are many examples of calculations that are performed on the raw data from the database to present information to the user in our winestore. These include calculating order totals, discounts, receipt information, delivery charges, and so on. Elementary mathematics is a common component of most web database applications; it's used throughout later examples.