Passing arrays

[wittanthony]

How can you set an array to not change unless you tell it to when the page loads?

[devinemke]

an array, like any other variable type in PHP, is created when a script is run and then destroyed when the script termintates. even ways of preserving variables accross multiple page requests (like session, cookies, etc...) are simply stored temporarily by the client or server (usually in text files) and then re-read into memory on the next page request.

so i suppose the answer to your question is you cannot set an array to not change unless you tell it to when the page loads because the array won't exist until the page loads.

[wittanthony]

How do I save arrays to a database or file and load that data back into a array form a database or file?

[devinemke]

if you want to save temporary data (like a user's login) then you really should read up on sessions. sessions allow you to store data accross mulitiple page request and lets PHP do most of the work for you.

if you want to store more permanent data (data that does not necessarily change based on user input) then simply store it a plain PHP file and [man]include[/man] it on subsequent pages. you could also store an array in a db using [man]serialize[/man] and [man]unserialize[/man] to easily preserve the array structure.