Thread

Hello all. I have the following code in my template:

{if description}{description}
{if:else}{event_summary}
{/if}

The template incorrectly evaluates the first “if” to false even when there is a description present. Not only that, if I leave out the conditional and just write

{description}
{event_summary}

Expressionengine will correctly print out the contents of both fields.

So… the fields really are filled, and they really have the correct names, and the conditional really ought to evaluate as “true”. Also, I’ve tried many permutations of the conditional (negations, wrapping it in quotes and brackets and comparing to an empty string, etc) and had no real luck. The only version that sort of worked was this one:

{description}
{if "{description}"==''}{event_summary}
{/if}

But today I discovered that this code causes some of the entries to display a blank white page, so it looks like it’s not a very good solution after all.

The “description” field is an LG TinyMCE, and event_summary is a Textarea. I’m using EE 1.6.8.

Any ideas?

Try:

{if description!=""}{description}
{if:else}{event_summary}
{/if}

Hi Spurlock,

Let us know if Mikes syntax works for you

Hey guys,

I’m going to tentatively say that it worked. All the entries that I was using to test the template (all of which had issues with at least one of the methods I tried) seem to render correctly with that code. Thanks!

Any chance for a quick explanation why that syntax should work while the others should fail?

Hi, Spurlock,

{if blah}
{/if}

is considered a simple conditional.

When you add an if:else or if:elseif it becomes an advanced conditional, and that changes how the parsing stages work. You can read about that in this wiki article on parse order.

But what you ended up doing is mixing simple and advanced conditionals - it’s best to stick with one syntax so that you know what you are getting into.

Make sense?