[Resolved] Displaying Array Contents...

Jezz

minus the crap.

I have a field in a MySQL table called ProductName. The values for this field are stored in a serialized array for each record. Each array can contain any number of product names. I know this is a bad way of doing this but for my purposes it will do the job.

The issue I am having is getting the contents of each array to display of a page. Ie, I wish to be able to view the contents of this table including the ProductName field. As most will probably be aware, if you just read in the values for $ProductName, you'll get all the serialized crap that gets stored with it, which I don't want. Therefore you unserialize the data -

$Get_Array = unserialize($ProductName);

This however, is not enough because what will be produced by the above would be 'Array', not what I want to see! I have been experiementing with implode() and explode() but cannot seem to get what I want, (a list of the actual product names). Currently i'm trying to use this code:

$Get_Array = unserialize($ProductName);
$Get_Array_Res = implode(", ",$Get_Array);

However it produces the following when executed:

on, on, on, on1
on, on1

There are two records in the table, one has to product names, the other has four, hense the two 0n's and the four 0n's. What 'on' actually is i'm not sure, something to do with the array data? If I don't use the implode function, I get this in my display page:

'Array'

However I do have a line of code for debugging:

echo "<PRE>", print_r($Get_Array),"</PRE>";

The result of this is:

Array
(
[Product A] => on
[Product B] => on
[Product C] => on
[Product D] => on
)
1
Array
(
[Product A] => on
[Product C] => on
)
1

You can see the product names, as well as the on's! how do I just get the product names, no 'array' no 'ons' just the actual names?

I no this is a bit long winded but I wanted to detail everything as much as poss to avoid confusion!

Any help would be much appreciated.

bodzan

while(list($key) = each($Get_Array)){
echo $Get_Array[$key];
}

Had to edit my post ...

Sorry...

Jezz

Ok, tried the revised code above. The result was:

ononononon

It just printed one 'on' for every value in all the arrays. Not good as,

a) I don't want 'ons'
b) I want the values to be displayed with the rest of the data for that record, not printed out in one long string as this code would seem to produce.

I see your thinking though.

bodzan

This will do the job...

No reason to define $key because is it automatically set to list the asoociated array's keys this way...

Jezz

See my previous post. I edited it.

bodzan

What do you get when you try this:

while(list($key) = each($Get_Array)){
echo $key."<br>";
}

Jezz

scratch that, I think it will work, it wasn't, because I wasn't using Array_Keys.

Ok now using the following:

while(list($key) = each($Get_Array))
{
$Array_Res .= $Get_Array[$key];
}

$text_block .= "
<Table border=1 Table width=100% cellpadding='2'>
<tr valign ='Top'>
<td col width=20%>$Name</td>
<td col width=20%>$EmailAddress</td>
<td col width=40%>$Array_Res</td>
<td col width=20%>$CompanyName</td></tr>
</Table>";

I need a way of formatting the output, so that each product name is comma delimited e.g. Product A, Product B etc

At the moment it comes out as one long string with no separation. In addition to this, the way its working now it gets all product names for the first record, and inserts them into the table column. But then rather than getiing just the result for the next record, it gets the result for the next record + the previous records. So the second record displays the results for itself + the first record. How do I stop this from happening?

bodzan

use this way of outputing the values

$Array_Res .= $Get_Array[$key].", ";

But, beware: this will mean also that there will be a comma, space after the last product in the array. Not really sure how to avoid that.

For the second question try to put the $Array_Res into an array line in the while loop put:

$Array_Res[$i] .= $Get_Array[$key].", ";
$i++;

Of course set $i before the while to be 0;

Then in the record showing jus echo the $Array_Res[0], then for the next one $array_Res[1] and so on...

You can use a loop to echo results this way or display it by hand...

Jezz

using this code:

$i = 0;

while(list($key) = each($Get_Array))
{
$Array_Res[$i] .= $Get_Array[$key].", ";
$i++;
}

Produces 'Array' when displayed on page! this is using

<td col width=40%>$Array_Res</td>

To display in table. Tried doing $Array_Res[0] but this printed out the same product name, once in the first record, twice in the second - should appear once in both, but with other values as well!

EDIT: - not to worry figurred it out. Didn't need all the $i++ stuff, just need to add $Array_Res = ''; after the display block, not sure why but this seems to do the trick!