array question

chrislive

hey everyone,

I am building a schedule script atm and I need to create an array that contains 3 informations, id, start-time end-time for each appointment.

i.e. each appointment has 3 items and their may be multiple appointments

so how would I firstly contruct such an array and then how would I get the values out I want.

I have only used simple arrays in the past (this may be simple im not sure haha)

Thanks for your help
Chris

hitman6003

There is two common ways of doing this. Have an array of arrays (multidimensional array) or have an array that contains values that are delimited by a value (|| for example) that as you loop through the values, you perform an explode() on them....creating an additional array. I'll give an example of each:

A multidimensional array is simply an array, that has each value assigned as an array. To address the values inside you would use something like:

$array[innerarray][innerarrayvalue];

To use an array with the lines being strings that you perform an explode on, you would just do a foreach on the array and do an explode on the lines, then address them like a normal array:

foreach ($array as $subarray) {
    $subarray = explode($delimiter, $subarray);
    $subarray[0] = whatevervalue;
}

Does that make any sense?

chrislive

thanks for your reply.
it kind of makes sence but still not sure how to use it.

so lets say i have an appointment time of 12:00 - 1:00 with an id of 9 and another between 3:00 -4:00 with id of 12 I would have:

$array[9][12:00][1:00];
$array[12][3:00][4:00];

then how I loop through the results?

hitman6003

That is more an array with a subarray that has a subarray.

I think it may be easier to have:

$array[9] => array (  

                                  start => 12:00
                                  end => 1:00
                               )
$array[12] => array (
                                  start => 3:00
                                  end => 4:00
                                 )

which is an array with a subarray that contains your vars.

To address them you would use $array[9][start] = "12:00";

help any?

hitman6003

Or if you wanted to loop through them while they were in the above format:

foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
    $value[start] = whatevertime;
    $value[end] = whatevertime;
}

chrislive

I am getting: unexpected T_DOUBLE_ARROW

hitman6003

what code are you using? Post 4 was an example of what print_r would output for an array with a single subarray, rather than actual code. Post 5 could be used to create such an array.

Or you could use:

for ($i = 0; $i <= 10; $i++) {
    $array[$i][start] = whatevertime;
    $array[$i][end] = whatevertime;
}

which would create an array with 11 elements (0 - 10) that assigned each "id" to have a start and end time of what ever you input after the assignment operator.

chrislive

haha ok sorry 😛 i look into post 5 now 😉