Using an array for Breadcrumb Trail

[condoug]

Hi all

I am building a site where I would like to use an array to store the steps involved in making a booking into a breadcrumb trail across the top of my site. Depending on what the user is booking, the breadcrumb trail is different and of different sizes.

I want to use a method like this:

		switch ($_SESSION['W_BOOKING_TYPE']) {
			case 'hotels':
				$_SESSION['W_BREADCRUMB']		= array('Getting Started', 'Select Hotel', 'Choose Extras', 'Comments', 'Payment');
			break;
			case 'cars':
				$_SESSION['W_BREADCRUMB']		= array('Getting Started', 'Select Car', 'Choose Extras', 'Comments', 'Payment');
			break;
			case 'clothing':
				$_SESSION['W_BREADCRUMB']		= array('Getting Started', 'Gender', 'Colour', 'Size', 'Type', 'Payment');
			break;
		}

Therefore I can loop through the array and output the values - simple! However I need to be able to store the physical URL of the breadcrumb against the name but not sure how I would do that with the array above?

i..e
Getting started links to /start
Select Hotel links to /start/hotels
Choose Extras links to /start/hotels/extras

Essentially when I loop through my array I need to pull out the name of the breadcrumb and the URL it links too, where obviously the preceding URLs within the array would be built up along the way - does that make sense?

Thanks for reading and any advice is appreciated.

[bradgrafelman]

If the names of the pages for a given type are guaranteed to be unique, you could use an associative array where those names are used as keys with the URLs being the values.

Otherwise, you could use a multidimensional array (where each element of the outer array is an array itself containing the two pieces of information).

[condoug]

Ok, I have updated one of my breadcrumbs to be as follows:

				$_SESSION['W_BREADCRUMB']		= array('/booking/package' 				=> 'Getting Started', 
														'/booking/package/list' 		=> 'Select Package', 
														'/booking/package/add-guests' 	=> 'Add Guests', 
														'/booking/package/comments' 	=> 'Comments', 
														'/booking/package/summary' 		=> 'Summary', 
														'/booking/package/payment' 		=> 'Payment');

Now that I have this setup, I am looping through the array and outputting the elements as a breadcrumb trail, see below:

function displayBreadCrumb() {
	foreach ($_SESSION['W_BREADCRUMB'] as $url => $crumb) {
		$trail .= "<a href=\"$url\" class=\" \">$crumb <img src=\"/images/icons/tick.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a> ";
	}

echo $trail;
}

However depending on which stage the user is at in the bokng process, the latter elements of the breadcrumb trail shouldnot be clickable, they will be disabled. Only the ones upto and including the current page will be hyperlinked.

My question now would be, lets say I am on the "Add Guests" screen, my REQUEST_URI will be /booking/package/add-guests.

Is there a nifty way of identifying (as I output my array of breadcrumbs above) of changing the styling of those crumbs which precede my current URL so they are clickable and the ones after my current URL are not clickable?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[bradgrafelman]

Initialize a variable (let's call it $disabled) to FALSE before you loop through the array. Inside the loop, check if the current URL path matches the array key; if so, set the variable to TRUE. Then, you'd just check the value of that variable on each iteration to decide whether or not the item should be clickable/enabled/whatever.