help please with references

[rdrnnr]

hello

I have some object-oriented php code. there are two involved ... a form object, and a form item object

this code loads up all the form items for a given form id from a database and then sets them into form item objects and associates them witht he current form object.

form items are grouped by parent id -- all form items have parent id=0 except the multiple options (checkbox, radio, etc) which have a parent id of the parent.

the sql loads them up ordered by parent id so all the main items come first. then when the code encounters an item with parent id !=0, it finds the form item and adds the option to it.

the problem i'm having is, all this seems to work but then later when i try to access the form items through the form object, the options are not there. here's the code.

// an excerpt of code from the form class, having just loaded a recordset of form items

	for($i=0; $i < mysql_numrows($res); $i++){
		$m_fi = new form_item();
		$row = mysql_fetch_array($res, MYSQL_ASSOC);
		$m_fi->set_from_row($row);
		if($m_fi->get_parent_id() == 0){
			// create the parent form id's
			$this->add_form_item($m_fi);
		} else {
			// add the option to the parent id
			foreach($arr = $this->get_form_items() as $m_item){
				if ($m_item->get_id() == $m_fi->get_parent_id()){
                    $m_item->add_option($m_fi);
					echo("count" . count($m_item->get_options()));  //  this always says 1
				}
			}
		}
	}

I'm thinking it has something to do with the reference, should I be using a "&" somewhere?

Please help if this makes sense!!

thanks a lot
-rdrnnr

[diego25]

$m_item->add_option($m_fi);
probably needs to be
$m_item->add_option(&$m_fi);

and you have to add the & when you define add_option, too.

Also, what does get_options() return?

Diego

[rdrnnr]

thanks diego

get_options() returns an array of the options for the form item.

in the mean time i switched it out to an iterative count, rather than a foreach, and it worked.

of course id still like to understand why it wasnt working, and i think your answer was probably right? what i was wondering was when doing a foreach($arr as $foo), $foo seems to be a separate entity, like, a new variable (forget what the technical term is). that would explain why, when i changed the control structure to a for($i=0, $i<$this->get_form_items() ; $i++) ..... etc etc, it worked, because acted on each item in the array directly, without creating a new instance of it.

-rdrnnr