Associative Array Manipulation

j_smith123

I wanted to load the result of an SQL query into an array for further manipulation. I got this code on the php.net documentation. The code is fine but I'm having problems understanding it's logic - I'm new to Php, by the way.

May be one of you could help me?

********code below*************
//assume db connectivity
//load it all into the associative array
$sql = "SELECT key,value FROM table";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
$myArray[$row[0]] = $row[1];
}
//now we expand it
while(list($key,$value) = each($myArray)) {
echo "$key : $value";
}

********code above*************

I'm having a very hard time understanding the line:

myArray[$row[0]] = $row[1]

I understand that row[0] will contain the name of the very first field
retrieved from the database and that row[1] will contain the next one.
But I cannot figure out what exactly the above line is supposed to do:
why is the next fieldname(i.e. $row[1])assigned to an element of
myArray whose index is the previous fieldname?

May be the answer is simple but I really cannot figure it out and it seems noone to
whom I've asked can.

I would be grateful if anyone of you could help me out.

regards
John

jc94062

I'm not sure exactly why anyone would use that (esp. as with PHP4 array_shift would appear to do that same) but personally I would (and do) use much simpler code to load results into an array...

while ($rows=mysql_fetch_array($queryname)):
$arrayname[] = $rows["field_name_from_result"];
endwhile;

then loop however you want

foreach() or for those who prefer (or PHP3 users)

for ($i=0; $i<count($arrayname); $i++)
echo $arrayname[$i]."<br>";

Hope that helps