[RESOLVED] Convert array to string?

[Joseph_Sliker]

Howdy;

I know this sounds a little bass-ackwards, but I'd like to convert an array into a text string. Is there a simple php function that does this?

Why? I often get mixed up with what is happening with arrays when I am trying to create JpGraphs from live MySQL queries. If I could create a JpGraph with a big "Label" element into which I could put a string showing the array contents, it would save me a lot of debug time.

Thanks.

[knowj]

I don't get what you mean completely but do you means something like this

foreach ($array as $name => $value)
{
$new .= $value;
}

[laserlight]

Use functions like [man]print_r/man and [man]var_dump/man to help you debug in this way.

[Joseph_Sliker]

Never mind...kept digging and found an adequate answer in the post: "Convert an Array to String and back" which suggested the serialize() function. The resulting string is full of gobbledygook, but it will do for my purposes.

foreach($_SESSION[GROUPGRAPHARRAY][$gr][$test_number] as $testphase=>$kidscores)
{$phases[]=$testphase;}
$string=serialize($phases);

.....(& in the JpGraph code within a label element or CanvasGraph)....

$txt="$gr, $test_number, $string";

...shows me if I am getting closer to having the code set up correclty to actually display the graph.

[Joseph_Sliker]

Thanks for your suggestions. I think the foreach thing would work but it would be fussy to write for a multi-dimensional associative array. The print_r() and var_dump() won't work in JpGraph, because the output is an image file: the string has to be turned into part of the image to actually display...particularly if I am trying to embed the image on a page with other content. Not sure if I am expressing this right, not being a real programmer and all. But I did figure out something that works well enough for now.

[leatherback]

Hi,

The foreach loop is actually very easy to apply when multidimensioal arrays are used:

function makestring($array)
  {
  $outval = '';
  foreach($array as $key=>$value)
    {
    if(is_array($value))
      {
      $outval .= makestring($value);
      }
    else
      {
      $outval .= $value;
      }
    } 
  return $outval;
  }

[Joseph_Sliker]

Oh, sa-weeeeet! Very cool! Thanks a lot! 🙂

I modified your code slightly so that it would show me all the levels (keys) of the array it cycles through. (and added the "\n" which works as a line break in the JpGraph label elements.

function makestring($array) 
{$outval = ""; 
foreach($array as $key=>$value) { 
if(is_array($value)) 
{
$outval .= "$key\n";
$outval .= makestring($value);} 
 else {$outval .= "$key: $value\n";} 
} return $outval; 
} 

[Weedpacket]

You can still use [man]print_r[/man] to return a string instead of output it: see its second (optional) parameter. You can use var_dump as well, but it needs an extra couple of statements around it to tickle the output buffering.

And then there's [man]var_export[/man], which attempts to construct equivalent PHP source code for a given data structure.