Conditional Statements

In order to code decisions into our javaScript programs it's necessary to use conditional statements know as if statements.

An if statement is a conditional statement which checks to see if a statement is true or false and then executes some additional statements depending on the result.

In javaScript a basic IF statement looks as follows:

if (condition) { 
    //code to be executed if condition is true 
}

A real example

//check if the statement 5 > 3 is true and if so
//then print a suitable message
    if (5 > 3){
        console.log("It is bigger!"); 
   }

We can also specify an alternative by using an else as follows:

if (5 > 3){
        console.log("It is bigger!"); 
}else {
        console.log("It is smaller");

}

The bigger than symbol > is know as a comparison operator. You may want to make use of the following operators:

We can only have 1 else with every if. If we want to specify more than one alternative then we have to use else if.

Consider the following example:

if (role == "Teacher"){
    console.log("You are a teacher!");
}
else if (role == "Student"){
    console.log("You are a student!");
}
else if (role == "Admin"){
    console.log("Your are an admin");
}
else{
     console.log("I don’t know what you are!");
}

In the above example you will notice that an else if statement is used to specify alternative paths and that you can have more than 1 else if statement. In fact, you can have as many else if statements as you like.