CodeSOD: Location Chooser

Today’s anonymous submitter inherited an application with a huge list of bugs and feature requests for missing features. While tracking down a bug, our submitter learned a lot about why “Allow additional stores to be viewable in the store selector,” was an unimplemented feature.

if (inv.inv_storeloc == 0) {
out.println(“<option selected value=”0″>Select</option>”);
out.println(“<option value=”1″>Location 1</option>”);
out.println(“<option value=”2″>Location 2</option>”);
} else if (inv.inv_storeloc == 1) {
out.println(“<option selected value=”1″>Location 1</option>”);
out.println(“<option value=”2″>Location 2</option>”);
} else {
out.println(“<option value=”1″>Location 1</option>”);
out.println(“<option selected value=”2″>Location 2</option>”);
}

If the user has not selected a store, we will output three options, selecting the first one- a prompt to select a store. If they have selected store 1, we output two options, with store one selected. Otherwise, we output two options with store two selected.

This has a little of everything. No real understanding of how to apply the selected attribute with a loop and conditionals. Hard coded HTML strings in the back end code. Hard coded store names which will be great if our business expands (or contracts).

I suspect the list of missing features isn’t going to get much shorter, and the list of bugs is only going to get longer.

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