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PHP Build a Basic PHP Website (2018) Listing and Sorting Inventory Items Displaying Item Details

Filipe Pacheco
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Filipe Pacheco
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 21,416 Points
Posted by Filipe Pacheco
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Filipe Pacheco
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 21,416 Points

Playing with the code

Hey guys, I was following Alena's instruction, but then thought of displaying the item details in a different way. I don't know if it would be the best thing to do, but I wanted to practice and see if it worked. I want to share it with you and get some feedback.

In this part, Alena uses the following code to display the item details

<table>

            <tr>
                <th>Category</th>
                <td><?php echo $item["category"]; ?></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <th>Genre</th>
                <td><?php echo $item["genre"]; ?></td>
            </tr>  
            <tr>
                <th>Format</th>
                <td><?php echo $item["format"]; ?></td>
            </tr>  
            <tr>
                <th>Year</th>
                <td><?php echo $item["year"]; ?></td>
            </tr>  

            <?php 
            if (strtolower($item["category"]) == "books"){?>
                <tr>
                    <th>Authors</th>
                    <td><?php echo implode(", ", $item["authors"]); ?></td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <th>Publisher</th>
                    <td><?php echo $item["publisher"]; ?></td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <th>ISBN</th>
                    <td><?php echo $item["isbn"]; ?></td>
                </tr>
            <?php } else if (strtolower($item["category"]) == "movies"){?>
                <tr>
                    <th>Director</th>
                    <td><?php echo $item["director"]; ?></td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <th>Writers</th>
                    <td><?php echo implode(", ", $item["authors"]); ?></td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <th>Stars</th>
                    <td><?php echo implode(", ", $item["stars"]); ?></td>
                </tr>
            <?php } else if (strtolower($item["category"]) == "music"){?>
                <tr>
                    <th>Artist</th>
                    <td><?php echo $item["artist"]; ?></td>
                </tr>
            <?php } ?> 
        </table>

What if instead of writing the keys like Category, Genre, Format, Year, etc.. I used a foreach loop to get the keys from the catalog array and display them there? Like this:

<table>
        <?php foreach($catalog[$id] as $item => $value){
                  echo "<tr>
                          <th>". ucfirst($item) . "</th>
                          <td>". $value . "</td>
                        </tr>";  


        }?>
</table>

It kind of worked, apart for some problems:

1) I got a notice because there is an array, so I gotta somehow implode the arrays inside.

2) I gotta get rid of the 'title' and 'img' key and values.

So I tried the following, and it worked.

In functions.php:

<?php
function get_item_detail($item, $value){
    if($item == 'title' | $item == 'img'){
      $output = null;
    }elseif(is_array($value)){
      $output = "<tr>
                    <th>". ucfirst($item) . "</th>
                    <td>". implode(", ",$value) . "</td>
                 </tr>";
    }else{
      $output = "<tr> 
                    <th>". ucfirst($item) . "</th>
                    <td>". $value . "</td>
                 </tr>";
    }
    return $output;                  
}
?>

In details.php

     <table>
        <?php 
              foreach($catalog[$id] as $item => $value){
                  echo get_item_detail($item, $value);
              }
       ?>
     </table>

I thinks the only thing different is the order of the elements, but if it was necessary to sort it in an specific way, I could change it directly in the catalog.php. What are your thoughts on this?

1 Answer

René Sánchez
René Sánchez
9,954 Points
René Sánchez
René Sánchez
9,954 Points

This is really awesome Filipe!! That is a pretty neat way to code it! Congratulations bro, great thought process (Y)