If Statements in Formidable Forms Field Calculations

Formidable Forms is my favorite form creation plugin for WordPress.  It’s extremely flexible, and ideal for web developers.

The Situation

Recently I was asked to make a complex price calculator for a carpet cleaning company.  The pricing worked as follows…

1 room cost $79
2 rooms cost $109
3 rooms cost $134
4 rooms cost $159
5 rooms cost $184

What We’re Making

Before launching into the detail let’s take a look at what we’ll be making…

Try changing the room number and see the result.

Why If Statements?

Since the pricing didn’t follow a predictable formula I needed to use if statements. 

The Formidable Field Calculations Documentation doesn’t mention anything about using if statements, but after looking at other the examples I  decided to do some experimentation…

if ( [carpet_rooms] == 1  ) { 79 } 

The above code works.  It basically says, if the rooms field is set to 1 the total will be set to 79.  It’s simple but  proves that if statements are possible.

By chaining if statements together, we can calculate the required pricing structure.  Here’s what it looks like.

if ( [carpet_rooms] == 1  ) { 79 } else if ( [carpet_rooms] == 2 ) { 109 } else if ( [carpet_rooms] >= 3 ) { 109 + (25 * ([carpet_rooms] - 2) ) }