Building PHP Sidebar

David03

This question is one that I've been working on solving, but haven't had much luck. I've seen someone do a similar task in JavaScript, and I wanted to redo it in PHP. What I want to do is store all my left sidebar in a PHP array. Like this:

<?php

//left sidebar array
    $array[";sc"] = "Site Content";
    $array["rg"] = "Reg Link";
    $array["/ts"] = "Not link";

function drawLeftNavMenu()
{
	for ($i = 0; $i < count($array); $i ++)
		{
		//formatting of sidbar here
		}
}
?>

And I want each element of the array to be formatted based on the first character within the brackets []. So if there is a semi colin ( ; ) I want it to be formatted as a Title, bolded, and unlinked. And if the first character was a / it would be formatted as just regular text. How would I do this?

halojoy

sounds like you could benefit from
doing a first character test
and select switch - case

Using something like this:

<?php
$firstchar = ord( $str );
// and
switch ( $firstchar ) {
case ";" :
do this
case "a" :
do this
}
?>

More Information:
http://php.net/ord
http://php.net/switch

🙂

David03

I read the article and I understand how to use the Switch statement. However, how would I refrence the first character within the []?

Installer

substr($str, 0, 1)
// or
$str{0}

will give you the first character of a string, or it would if your code worked. It won't because:

You use "for" with integer indexes instead of "foreach", so that you try to access "$array[0]", "$array[1]", etc. when there are no such indexes in your array.
"$array" in your function is not the same as your other "$array". Different scopes, different variables.

This will give you the first character of the array keys:

$array[";sc"] = "Site Content"; 
$array["rg"] = "Reg Link"; 
$array["/ts"] = "Not link"; 

drawLeftNavMenu($array);

function drawLeftNavMenu($array) 
{ 
    foreach ($array as $key => $value) { 
        echo substr($key, 0, 1) . '<br />'; 
    } 
}

although I can't say much for this way of structuring your data. It's probably going to cause you continual problems down the line.