Switch vs if else - menu

Question

I use if else for custom menus in Wordpress, to load various location menus based on parent page. The agency I work for is adding countless amounts of cities, and it's getting out of hand. One thing I am trying to do, is come up with a more efficient way to check the items, someone suggested switch, and I just wanted to throw this out there and see what you all think. These are not complete codes, and I know the menus are bad UX, and all that, it's not my call. I just want some input on performance differences. thanks.
Here is an example of switch code:
function is_subpage() {
global $post; // load details about this page
if ( is_page() && $post->post_parent ) { // test to see if the page has a parent
return $post->post_parent; // return the ID of the parent post
} else { // there is no parent so ...
return false; // ... the answer to the question is false
}
}
$selectedMenu = "primary";
$my_page_id = is_subpage();
if(!$my_page_id)
$my_page_id = get_the_ID();
switch ($my_page_id) {
case('489'):
$selectedMenu = 'columbus';
break;
case('6583'):
$selectedMenu = 'cumming';
break;
}
wp_nav_menu( array(
'theme_location' => 'main-menu',
'menu' => $selectedMenu,
'menu_class' => 'clearfix'
));
and here is an example of if else code:
if(is_page( '28' ) || '28' == $post->post_parent) { $locationMenu = 'louisville'; }
'menu' => $locationMenu,

Answer 1

Don't second guess or assume anything about the efficiency of an interpreter or compiler. if else might be better at one scenario and switch at another.
The problem with your code is readability and maintainability and not performance. It is hard to be specific without knowing all details about your needs, but it seems like what you need is to have at each post a custom field which indicates the menu associated with that post, and then the admin can configure them and you will have some more coffee time ;)
This is actually a worse solution in terms of performance, but if you really need the site to be fast then you are going to use a caching plugin which will make the whole php related performance discussion just a waste of time.

Answer 2

From a PHP perspective...
In lieu of having the page id to location table in a database, you could include a structure like this on pages you need it:
$idToLocation = array(
"489" => "columbus",
"6583" => "cumming"
// et cetera
);
Then to get the location:
$id = "489"; // for example
if (!array_key_exists($id, $idToLocation)) {
echo "location for id not found";
die();
}
$location = $idToLocation[$id];