PHP

Using Arrays

1
Arrays
Topics:
Numerically indexed arrays
Non-numerically indexed arrays (hashes, associative
arrays)
Array operators
Multidimensional arrays - read
Array sorting
Other array functions
Complete reference for arrays at
http://www.php.net/array
2
 Arrays
An array = a set of data represented by a single variable name
Example, the $products array:

In PHP, each array element consists of :

 A value
 A key or index that is used to access the element
 (internally, all arrays in PHP are associative = hashes…)
The keys / indexes can be:
 Non-negative integers → these PHP arrays have the logical structure
similar to a classic array in other languages (Java, C) and can be used in
the traditional way
 Strings → associative arrays or hashes
 Mixture of both
3
 Creating Numerically Indexed Arrays
Create a numerically-indexed (shortly indexed) array with
the language construct array:
Syntax:
$array_name = array(values);
Examples:
$products = array(‘Tires’, ‘Oil’, ‘Spark Plugs’);
$list = array(2, 4, 6, 8);
Keys are automatically 0, 1, 2 etc.
Note: $array_name = array(); creates an empty array

4
 Creating Numerically Indexed Arrays
Create an indexed array by assigning a value to an element of
an array that doesn’t exist (the array!):
$array_name[index] = value; or $array_name[] = value;
Writing to an indexed array with empty [ ] creates the new element at
end of the array  PHP arrays don’t have fixed length!
Example:
$list = array(2, 4, 6, 8);
$list[ ] = 10;  $list is now array(2, 4, 6, 8, 10)
Example:
$Provinces[] = "Newfoundland and Labrador";
$Provinces[] = "Prince Edward Island";
if $Provinces didn’t exist before, it is created and has 2 elements,
indexed 0 and 1.
5
 Creating Numerically Indexed Arrays
Other ways to create indexed arrays:
$new_array = $existing_array; // as a single unit
The range(…) function creates an array with a range of values
 Can be used with either numbers or characters (single letters)
 $n = range(4, 7); is same as $n = array(4, 5, 6, 7);

 $c = range(‘p’, ‘s’); is same as $c = array(‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ‘s’);

A third parameter allows to specify a step size between values:
$odds = range(1, 10, 2); creates an array containing (1, 3, 5, 7, 9)
Load an array contents directly from a file
Load an array contents directly from a database
Functions to extract parts of an array or reorder an array
6
 Creating Associative Arrays (Hashes)
Create an associative array with the language construct array:
 $prices = array(‘Tires’ => 100, ‘Oil’ => 10, ‘Spark Plugs’ => 4);
 $hash = array(‘QB’ => “Palmer”, ‘WR’ => “OchoCinco”, …);
 After first keys, if you don’t supply more, you get numeric keys starting
from 0:
$mixed = array('QB' => "Palmer", 'WR' => OchoCinco', 'Smith',
'Williamson');
 'Smith‘ is indexed 0, 'Williamson‘ is indexed 1
Create an associative array by assigning a value to an element of
an array that doesn’t exist (the array!):
 $prices[‘Tires’] = 100;
$prices[‘Oil’] = 10;
$prices[‘Spark Plugs’] = 4;
7
 Accessing Array Contents
Use array name plus the index / key in square brackets to
access array elements.
$Provinces[0]
$prices[‘Tires’] or $prices[“Tires”]
The quotes around the string keys are optional for single-word
keys (a warning might be generated), but generally are used
However, quotes cannot be used when interpolating an
element of an array; solutions:
Don’t rely on interpolation, e.g. use instead regular string
concatenation: echo “The price for tires is”. $prices[‘Tires’];
Omit quotes: e.g. echo “The price for tires is $prices[Tires]”;

8
Creating Arrays
http://cscdb.nku.edu/csc301/frank/PHP_Arrays/arrays_cre
ating.php

9
 Accessing Array Contents
Read/modify an array element’s value as usual
Writing to array with a currently-undefined key (or beyond the
end of an indexed array) creates a new element.
Use the unset(…) function to eliminate:
An array:
$products = array(‘Tires’, ‘Oil’, ‘Spark Plugs’);
unset($products); // $products doesn’t exist after this statement
An array element:
$products = array(‘Tires’, ‘Oil’, ‘Spark Plugs’);
unset($products[0]);
// $products remains with 2 elements only, indexed 1 and 2
10
 Sequential Access to Array Elements
Logical internal structure of arrays:
 elements are stored in a linked list of cells;
 each cell includes both the key and the value of the element;
 cells are linked in the order they are created - numerically indexed arrays too 
classic arrays are ordered by index, PHP arrays are ordered by creation order
 array elements can be can accessed in creation order or key order if
keys are numbers

11
 Sequential Access to Array Elements
Regular for loops for numerically indexed arrays:

$products = array('Tires', 'Oil', 'Spark Plugs');

for ($i=0; $i<3; $i++) {
echo $products[$i] . ", ";
}

12
 Sequential Access to Array Elements
Foreach loops, specially designed for arrays, can be used
for all types of indexes.
For numerically indexed arrays, use:
foreach($arrayName as $val)
$val steps through each of the values in $arrayName

For associative arrays, you can also use:

foreach($arrayName as $key => $val)
$key and $val are set to each key - value in the hash in turn (in
the defined order = creation order)

13
 Sequential Access to Array Elements
Foreach loops, examples:

$products = array('Tires', 'Oil', 'Spark Plugs');

foreach ($products as $val) {
echo $val . ", ";
}

$prices = array('Tires' => 100, 'Oil' => 10, 'Spark Plugs' => 4);
foreach ($prices as $key => $val) {
echo "$key - $val, ";
}

14
 Sequential Access to Array Elements
Important - to modify the array elements’ values in a foreach
loop, use the reference operator:

$prices = array('Tires' => 100, 'Oil' => 10, 'Spark Plugs' => 4);
foreach ($prices as $key => &$val) {
$val *= 1.05; // increases product prices by 5%
}

By using &, $val will successively be an alias (alternative

name) for each array element value, instead of being a
separate variable that holds a copy of the array element
value!
15
 Sequential Access to Array Elements
Each array has an internal pointer (or marker) that references one
element in the array → called current pointer
Various functions exist to (in)directly manipulate
this pointer to navigate in the array:
reset($a) sets the current element of array $a
to the start of the array; returns $a’s first element
end($a) sends the pointer to the end of the
array $a; returns last array element
current($a) or pos($a) return the array element
pointed to by the current pointer
next($a) and each($a) advance the pointer forward one element; return
the current element before (each) / after (next) advancing the pointer
prev($a) is the opposite of next()
16
 Array Operators
Most of them have an analogue in the scalar operators, but with a
different meaning!
+ $a + $b performs the union of $a and $b arrays; $b is appended to $a,
except for $b’s elements that have the same keys as some elements
already in $a, which are not added
== $a ==$b is true if $a and $b contain the same elements
= = = $a ==$b is true if $a and $b contain the same elements, with the same
type, in the same order
!= $a !=$b is true if $a and $b do NOT contain the same elements
<> Same as !=
!= = $a !==$b is true if $a and $b do NOT contain the same elements, with
the same type, in the same order

17
 Size of an Array
Two functions get the number of elements of an array passed to
them; return 0 for an empty array and 1 for a scalar variable:
count($a )
sizeof($a)
array_count_values($array_name) returns an associative array with:
keys = the distinct values from $array_name
the value for each key is the number of times that key occurs in
$array_name
Example: $list = array(1, 2, 6, 6, 6, 2);
$c = count($list); // $c contains 6
$ac = array_count_values($list);// $ac contains 1=>1, 2=>2, 6=>3
18
 Sorting Arrays
3 types of sort:
Indexed array – sort values and reset indexes
Hash – sort by values
Hash – sort by keys

3 ways to sort (function names follow above order):

Ascending – sort( ), asort( ), ksort( )
Descending – rsort( ), arsort( ), krsort( )
User-defined – usort( ), uasort( ), uksort( )

19
 Sorting Arrays
The ascending and descending sort routines are just called
with the array name
 ascending/descending sort() also take an optional argument that
specifies the sort type: SORT_REGULAR (the default; alphabetically
for strings, numeric order for numbers), SORT_NUMERIC, or
SORT_STRING
They sort the original array
User-defined sort takes second argument
 The name of a function that returns <0, 0 or >0 given 2 input
arguments based on their relative order (<0 means 1st is less than 2nd)

20
Arrays Sorting
http://cscdb.nku.edu/csc301/frank/PHP_Arrays/arrays_sor
ting.php

21
 Loading Arrays from Files
Recall that file($file_name) returns the entire file content as an array:
each line in the file is one element of this array.
A line can be split into fields using
array explode(string $separator, string $line_string [, int $limit])
Ex: $s = "15:42, 20th April\t4 tires\t1 oil\t6 spark plugs\t$434.00\t22 4th St, Troy";
$a = explode (“\t”, $s);
// $s is exploded into: "15:42, 20th April", "4 tires", "1 oil", "6 spark plugs",
// "$434.00", and "22 4th St, Troy", which are stored in the array $a
The optional limit parameter can be used to limit the number of parts returned
Opposite for explode(): string implode(string $separator, array $arr)
it combines an array’s elements’ values into a single string, separated by the
specified separator

22