Help with Array in an Array please

Question

I'm attempting to put my resume together for employers and I'm having a little trouble with the array in an array.

I started with a foreach loop then changed it because it didn't work. I tried a few other things, but I eventually settled on this current version.

I want to make a list in HTML for each of my duties for each of my employers, but I can't get the list for the duties to work.

Could you help please?

Here is my mark up (I shortened it to keep it clean here)

<?php
function employer_list_view($job) {
    $output = "";
    $output = $output . "<h3>" . $job["employer"] . "</h3>";
    $output = $output . "<h3>" . $job["title"] . "</h3>";
    $output = $output . "<h3>" . $job["city"] . "</h3>";
    $output = $output . "<ul>";
    $output = $output . "<li>" . $job["first"] . "</li>";
    $output = $output . "<li>" . $job["second"] . "</li>";
    $output = $output . "<li>" . $job["third"] . "</li>";
    $output = $output . "</ul>";
};
$jobs = array();
$jobs[102] = array(
    "employer" => "Better Business Bureau",
    "title" => "Investigator",
    "city" => "Seattle, WA",
        "first" => "Regularly conducted analysis...",
        "second" => "Drafted public alerts...",
        "third" => "Handled incoming...."
);
?>

Answer 1 · 2014-07-22T02:35:21Z

July 22, 2014 2:35am

The foreach loop is the correct way to handle a multidimensional array. You should however not make a habit of concatinating strings of HTML in your php code, it makes trouble shooting much more difficult. Build your data, and then build your HTML then where you need to loop through data in the HTML or do conditionals in the HTML break in and out of the php code like this.

<?php

$jobs = array();

$jobs[102] = array(
  "employer" => "Better Business Bureau",
  "title" => "Investigator",
  "city" => "Seattle, WA",
  "first" => "Regularly conducted analysis...",
  "second" => "Drafted public alerts...",
  "third" => "Handled incoming...."
);

?>
<html>
<body>
<?php foreach($jobs as $job): ?>  
  <h3><?php echo $job["employer"]; ?></h3>
  <h3><?php echo $job["title"]; ?></h3>
  <h3><?php echo $job["city"]; ?></h3>
  <ul>
    <li><?php echo $job["first"]; ?></li>
    <li><?php echo $job["second"]; ?></li>
    <li><?php echo $job["third"]; ?></li>
  </ul>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</body>
</html>

This is much easier to read debug and update as necessary.

Answer 2 · 2014-07-23T07:01:52Z

July 23, 2014 7:01am

Also, just FYI, you can take:

$output = $output . "<h3>" . $job["employer"] . "</h3>";

and use it cleaner like this:

$output .= "<h3>" . $job['employer'] . "</h3>";

just use a dot equal, because

$output = 'Hello '; $output .= 'World';

echo($output);

Echo Reads:

Hello World

Hope this helps too! :)

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Kris Byrum

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Help with Array in an Array please

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