Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Development Tools Using PHP with MySQL Using Relationship Tables in MySQL Fetching in a While Loop

Leigh Maher
Leigh Maher
21,830 Points
Posted by Leigh Maher
Leigh Maher
21,830 Points

Creating the empty array

In this video Randy creates an empty array: 

$product["sizes"] = array();

Can anyone explain exactly why this is necessary? I removed this line from my code and the project still works.

Thanks,

2 Answers

Davis Vilums
Davis Vilums
18,105 Points
Davis Vilums
Davis Vilums
18,105 Points

For this particular example everything worked fine, but in some cases you could need to define an array before, if you want to push or pull from it. If you haven't defined it, you can end up crushing your code, because variable is undefined.

Also It is better to predefine all variables before using them, so later it is easeier to read your code and see what kind of variables you have used.

Leigh Maher
Leigh Maher
21,830 Points
Leigh Maher
Leigh Maher
21,830 Points

Ah yes, that makes sense. Thanks Davis.