We left our catalog page looking like this with the bulleted list of four items.

In the code for

the catalog.php file, we had our catalog stored in a simple indexed array.

Instead of letting PHP assign the key,

we have specified our own item ID for the key.

Each element in the main catalog array represents one item.

Right now each element has a piece of text with a title of the item as its value.

Let's change this first element making the value another array

instead of just a piece of text.

Let's go back into our catalog.

Before we add anymore information to our array here,

let's separate out this code into a new include file.

We'll name this file data.php.

Let's copy our array from catalog.php,

and paste it into data.php.

Add our opening php tag, and the closing php tag.

Now we're ready to add a new dimension to our array.

I'm going to show you another shortcut for adding an array.

Instead of using the keyword array with parentheses,

we can simply add open and closed square brackets.

We'll use this as we add another array to the first element

in our main catalog array.

I'll refer to this as our interior array,

because it's inside our main catalog array.

This interior array will contain information about this one item.

One element for each piece of information.

The first element will contain the title.

We'll specify the key for each element here using a piece of text to describe

what information the element contains.

Title and then the = sign, followed by the > sign.

Then we also have the value in quotation marks, because it too, is a piece of text.

We need to add another element to this interior array, for

all the information about this item.

We separate items in array with a comma.

Then we can create a new element for each of the shared attributes of this item.

The next element we'll add is the path to the image.

Call it Image=>, our path

is img/media/design_patterns.jpg.

Then we'll add the genre.

Tech.

The format.

Paperback.

And the year.

Since this value is a number, it does not need quotation marks.

Finally, let's specify the category.

This will match up with one of the navigation headings, books,

movies, or music.

This one's Books.

Each category will have some extra details that are specific to the item category.

Design Patterns is a book, so now we need to add the extra book elements.

To start with, we'll add ISBN.

Then we'll add publisher.

And finally, authors.

Although many books only have one author, some books,

including this one, have multiple authors.

Instead of making authors a string like our elements,

we'll make authors another array.

And just like that, we have a third dimension to our associated array.

Let's add our authors.

And let's finish off our arrays.

We've changed the first element in our main catalog array from a simple piece of

text to a full associative array, this makes our item much more useful.

We now have attributes for each item grouped together.

This will allow us to display details of each item.

To get our catalog ready to use,

we'll need to add the details of each item in the array.

For movies and music, we'll have elements specific to those items.

You probably don't want to watch me type out all the code for all the other items

in the catalog, and you probably don't want to type them yourself.

So I've attached a text file to this video with the code you'll need.

I also added a few more items so we have four items in each category.

Download that text file and copy the code from that file and

paste it into our data.php file.

Also, when ending a php file with php code,

you do not need to use the php closing tag.

Leaving off the closing tag is a widely accepted coding practice

used by projects such as WordPress and Drupal.

In fact, the Zend Framework specifically forbids using it.

The closing tag is not required by PHP, and by omitting it at the end of a file,

you guarantee that no trailing whitespace can be added.

These might cause unexpected results.

Once you've pasted your code the full array should look like this.