A basic example of using PHP arrays.
This tutorial will review how to define and use PHP arrays when creating HTML output. Here is a basic sample of using an array and the echo command to create a personalized hello mesage.
<?php
$person['first'] = 'Jane';
$person['last'] = 'Doe';
echo '<p>Hello '.$person['first'].' '.$person['last'].'!</p>';
?>Arrays are a special type of variable that can be used to store more than one piece of data. Each piece of data is assigned a key. The example above includes one array named $person and two keys first and last. Arays are often used to store a list of data:
<?php
$languages = array( 'PHP', 'HTML', 'JavaScript', 'CSS' );
?>Or a group of information like an individuals profile:
<?php
$person['first'] = 'Jane';
$person['last'] = 'Doe';
$person['email'] = 'jane.doe@email.com';
$person['age'] = 30;
?>There are some rules when naming your arrays and keys:
- Array names must follow the same rules as variable names.
- Unlike variables names, array keys can start with numbers or be numeric.
- Array keys can use any alpha-numeric characters and underscores.
- Array keys are case sensitive.
The goal of this series of lessons is to become comfortable with retrieveing data from a database and displaying the data in a web page. When working with database data the process roughly follows these steps:
- Fetch data from the database.
- Create a loop to iterate through the retrieved data.
- Use if statements to check which data is ready for output.
- Put the data into a series of variables and/or arays.
- Use
echoto output the variables and format them with HTML.
In this lesson we're going to focus on the last step, outputting data using HTML, variables, and the echo statement. This time the data will be placed in an array.
-
Open up a new file and name it arrays.php.
-
Add the following code to the new PHP file:
<!doctype html> <html> <head> <title>Links and Arrays</title> </head> <body> <h1>Links and Arrays</h1> <p>Use PHP echo and arrays to output the following link information:</p> <hr> <?php $link['name'] = 'Codecademy'; $link['url'] = 'https://www.codecademy.com/'; $link['image'] = 'codecademy.png'; $link['description'] = 'Learn to code interactively, for free.'; ?> </body> </html> -
After the array is defined use a series of
echostatements to display the content. For example outputting the$link['name']might look like this:<?php echo '<h1>'.$link['name'].'</h1>'; ?>
Note
Add each value from the array one at a time. Test your PHP after each new line of PHP.
Full tutorial URL:
https://codeadam.ca/learning/php-arrays.html
- Visual Studio Code or Brackets (or any code editor)
- Filezilla (or any FTP program)
