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PHP PHP Arrays and Control Structures PHP Arrays Multidimensional Arrays

Posted by Jordan Miller
Jordan Miller
3,953 Points

Can anybody help me print the arrays to the list below, please?

I am really struggling with trying to print the arrays to the UL below the comment in my code. I have tried so many different options but I keep receiving error messages. If somebody could talk me through this and provide an answer I would be very grateful.

index.php 
<?php
//edit this array
$contacts = array( 
                  array (('Alena' => 'Alena Holligan', 'Alena' => 'alena.holligan@teamtreehouse.com')),
                  array (('Dave' => 'Dave McFarland', 'Dave' => 'dave.mcfarland@teamtreehouse.com')),
                  array (('Treasure' => 'Treasure Porth', 'Treasure' => 'treasure.porth@teamtreehouse.com')),
                  array (('Andrew' => 'Andrew Chalkley', 'Andrew' => 'andrew.chalkley@teamtreehouse.com')));

echo var_dump($contacts);
echo "<ul>\n";
//$contacts[0] will return 'Alena Holligan' in our simple array of names.
echo "<li>$contacts</li>\n";
echo "<li>$contacts</li>\n";
echo "<li>$contacts</li>\n";
echo "<li>$contacts</li>\n";
echo "</ul>\n";
Caleb Kemp
Caleb Kemp
12,754 Points
Caleb Kemp
Caleb Kemp
12,754 Points

Well, for the first part, your arrays have to many parenthesis "(" in them, so

$contacts = array( 
                  array (('Alena' => 'Alena Holligan', 'Alena' => 'alena.holligan@teamtreehouse.com')),
                  array (('Dave' => 'Dave McFarland', 'Dave' => 'dave.mcfarland@teamtreehouse.com')),
                  array (('Treasure' => 'Treasure Porth', 'Treasure' => 'treasure.porth@teamtreehouse.com')),
                  array (('Andrew' => 'Andrew Chalkley', 'Andrew' => 'andrew.chalkley@teamtreehouse.com')));

should be 

$contacts = array( 
                  array ('name' => 'Alena Holligan', 'Alena' => 'alena.holligan@teamtreehouse.com'),
                  array ('Dave' => 'Dave McFarland', 'Dave' => 'dave.mcfarland@teamtreehouse.com'),
                  array ('Treasure' => 'Treasure Porth', 'Treasure' => 'treasure.porth@teamtreehouse.com'),
                  array ('Andrew' => 'Andrew Chalkley', 'Andrew' => 'andrew.chalkley@teamtreehouse.com'));

Your second problem is putting your contacts array into the proper format, currently you have entries like 'Alena' => 'Alena Holligan'. You don't want that. Your entries for names should be in the form 'name' = 'Alena Holligan' and 'name' = 'Dave McFarland' and so on. The same thing is also true for the emails. 'Alena' => 'alena.holligan@teamtreehouse.com' should be written as 'email' => 'alena.holligan@teamtreehouse.com' and so on.

Your third problem seems to be how to reference the data. If you want information from the first person (Alena) in your contacts, you would write $contacts[0], for Andrew (4th person), you would write $contacts[3]. for completeness here is how you would get Dave's name $contacts[1]['name'] and Treasure's email $contacts[2]['email']

Whew! I realize that may seem like a lot, however, there is still one more issue we must address, how do we add the variable to our echo statement? Unfortunately, the teacher did not cover this (that I could find), but it isn't too difficult. If you have the echo statement

echo "<li></li>\n";

If you wanted to have Dave's name in there, here is how you would do it.

echo "<li>" . $contacts[1]['name'] ."</li>\n";

Pay careful attention to where the 2 extra quotation marks " were added and that you need a dot . on each side of the variable. Hope that helps! :smile:

Jordan Miller
Jordan Miller
3,953 Points

Now I have seen the way you've coded it, it is starting to make sense to me so thank you again for your help! Like my little guarding (coding) angel :)

Caleb Kemp
Caleb Kemp
12,754 Points
Caleb Kemp
Caleb Kemp
12,754 Points

Glad to hear it's starting to make sense :)