Reputation: 217

Echo a multidimensional array in PHP

I have a multidimensional array and I'm trying to find out how to simply "echo" the elements of the array. The depth of the array is not known, so it could be deeply nested.

In the case of the array below, the right order to echo would be:

This is a parent comment
This is a child comment
This is the 2nd child comment
This is another parent comment

This is the array I was talking about:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [comment_id] => 1
            [comment_content] => This is a parent comment
            [child] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Array
                        (
                            [comment_id] => 3
                            [comment_content] => This is a child comment
                            [child] => Array
                                (
                                    [0] => Array
                                        (
                                            [comment_id] => 4
                                            [comment_content] => This is the 2nd child comment
                                            [child] => Array
                                                (
                                                )
                                        )
                                )
                        )
                )
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [comment_id] => 2
            [comment_content] => This is another parent comment
            [child] => Array
                (
                )
        )
)

Upvotes: 16

Answers (9)

Dung

Reputation: 20565

Proper, Better, and Clean Solution:

function traverseArray($array)
{
    // Loops through each element. If element again is array, function is recalled. If not, result is echoed.
    foreach ($array as $key => $value)
    {
        if (is_array($value))
        {
            Self::traverseArray($value); // Or
            // traverseArray($value);
        }
        else
        {
            echo $key . " = " . $value . "<br />\n";
        }
    }
}

You simply call in this helper function traverseArray($array) in your current/main class like this:

$this->traverseArray($dataArray); // Or
// traverseArray($dataArray);

source: http://snipplr.com/view/10200/recursively-traverse-a-multidimensional-array/

Upvotes: 6

Muhammad Tahir

Reputation: 2491

There are multiple ways to do that

1) - print_r($array); or if you want nicely formatted array then

echo '<pre>'; print_r($array); echo '<pre/>';

//-------------------------------------------------

2) - use var_dump($array) to get more information of the content in the array like datatype and length. //-------------------------------------------------

3) - you can loop the array using php's foreach(); and get the desired output.

function recursiveFunction($array) {
    foreach ($array as $val) {
            echo $val['comment_content'] . "\n";
            recursiveFunction($vals['child']);
    }
}

Upvotes: 1

jhogendorn

Reputation: 6140

Recursion would be your answer typically, but an alternative would be to use references. See http://www.ideashower.com/our_solutions/create-a-parent-child-array-structure-in-one-pass/

Upvotes: 0

Matt V.

Reputation: 9809

If you're outputting the data for debugging and development purposes, Krumo is great for producing easily readable output. Check out the example output.

Upvotes: 0

Matt Lowden

Reputation: 2616

if you wanted to store it as a variable you could do:

recurse_array($values){
    $content = '';
    if( is_array($values) ){
        foreach($values as $key => $value){
            if( is_array($value) ){
                $content.="$key<br />".recurse_array($value);
            }else{
                $content.="$key = $value<br />";
            }

        }
    }
    return $content;
}

$array_text = recurse_array($array);

Obviously you can format as needed!

Upvotes: 1

keithjgrant

Reputation: 12739

It looks like you're only trying to write one important value from each array. Try a recursive function like so:

function RecursiveWrite($array) {
    foreach ($array as $vals) {
        echo $vals['comment_content'] . "\n";
        RecursiveWrite($vals['child']);
    }
}

You could also make it a little more dynamic and have the 'comment_content' and 'child' strings passed into the function as parameters (and continue passing them in the recursive call).

Upvotes: 18