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

PHP PHP Arrays and Control Structures PHP Arrays Multidimensional Arrays

Posted by Brolin Osindi
Brolin Osindi
1,830 Points

displaying arrays

Displaying an error has become really tough. I would appreciate if someone cared to help me solve the task.

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

echo "<ul>\n";
//$contacts[0] will return 'Alena Holligan' in our simple array of names.
echo "<li>{$array[array]['name','email']}</li>\n";
echo "<li>{$array[array]['name','email']}</li>\n";
echo "<li>{$array[array]['name','email']}</li>\n";
echo "<li>{$array[array]['name','email']}</li>\n";
echo "</ul>\n";

1 Answer

Connor Walker
Connor Walker
17,985 Points

Each array that you have stored in the $contacts array has a key. As the key has not been created manually by using the => syntax, they have been given a numeric key with the first array in the array being 0 and the last array in the array being 3. We use this key to access each array inside the array.

The next thing we need to do is access the specific index inside each array in the $contacts array. Unlike the $contacts array, we have set the keys manually using the => operator, so in this case the keys are "name" and "email".

To output the specific values to the screen we need to use these 2 keys together. We'll use the first numeric key to find which array to take the data from and then in square brackets after that we use the key we set ourselves to access the correct index. That should look something like this (without the opening <?php tag, that is just for syntax highlighting):

<?php
echo "<li>" . $contacts[0]["name"] . " : " . $contacts[0]["email"] . "</li>\n";
echo "<li>" . $contacts[1]["name"] . " : " . $contacts[1]["email"] . "</li>\n";
echo "<li>" . $contacts[2]["name"] . " : " . $contacts[2]["email"] . "</li>\n";
echo "<li>" . $contacts[3]["name"] . " : " . $contacts[3]["email"] . "</li>\n";