Working with arrays

cgollapu

I have an array of state_id's and StateNames. I wrote a function to scan this array and return the state name for a given state_id.

I just feel my code is not efficient. Appreciate if you can take a look and suggest improvements.
/
/function returns the state name for whose ID equals the $_SESSION['custvars']['state_id']
function takes in an array of states $slist which is an array of state_id's and StateName's/
/

function assignstate($slist){
//get the customers state name from the id in customer table.
if (!(empty($SESSION['custvars']['state_id']))){
$get = false;
@reset ($slist);
while ($stateinfo = @($slist)){
foreach ($stateinfo as $k => $v){
if ($v == $SESSION['custvars']['state_id']) $get = true;
if (($get) and ($k == "statename")){
$statename = $v;
return $statename;
}
}//End foreach
next($slist);
}//End while
}// end if (!(empty($_SESSION['custvars']['state_id'])))
else return NULL;
} //end function

laserlight

Your logic doesnt look correct.
You are checking for the element of $slist whose statename element matches $_SESSION['custvars']['state_id']

You need to be clear what exact is $slist, i.e. where does state_id and statename come in?
Does $slist[0] return the first element in $slist?
Does $slist[0]['state_id'] return the state_id value?
Or should it be $slist[0][0]?
What about $slist[0]['statename']?

cgollapu

$slist is an array of arrays.

$slist [0] ['sate_id] returns the id for the state say 1 for Michigan
$slist [0] ['statename'] returns Michigan
$slist [1] ['state_id] returns 2 say for Ohio
$slist [1] ['statename'] returns Ohio.

Does this make sense?

cgollapu

I want to continue my previous post. Besides it is still night in Singapore. As with every thing else I feel, everything I do needs improvement so read this together with my previous post.

$slist was explained in previous post.

$SESSION['custvars']['state_id'] is the state ID selected by the customer, say 27. The function looks into $slist (array of arrays, each element of $slist has 2 elements 'state_id' and 'statename') and returns the name of the state, say 'New York' which corresponds to the ID number in $SESSION['custvars']['state_id'].

Thanks

laserlight

Assuming your array is not sorted (i.e. must use linear search), this is how you should do it:

function assignstate($state_id, $slist) {
	$size = count($slist);
	for ($i = 0; $i < $size; $i++) {
		if ($slist[$i]['state_id'] == $state_id) {
			return $slist[$i]['statename'];
		}
	}
	return false;
}

Count the array size.
Scan from the first element of the array to the last
If the state_id of current element matches that provided, then return statename of current element.
If no state_id matches, then return false.
Clean and simple.

To actually use it, you would validate $_SESSION['custvars']['state_id'] (perhaps assigning it to $cust_state_id), and if all is okay call:
if (($statename = assignstate($cust_state_id, $slist)) !== false)

cgollapu

Thanks a lot, makes so much more sense.