- Indexed Arrays 5:13
- Adding Array Elements 5:08
- List Quiz 5 questions
- Removing Array Elements 4:50
- Editing Array Elements 1:36
- Modifying Arrays 3 objectives
- Associative Arrays 3:48
- Associative Quiz 5 questions
- Mixing Data Types in Arrays 6:07
- Multidimensional Arrays 6:14
- Multidimensional Arrays 3 objectives
- Sorting Arrays 6:16
- Mixing and Sorting 5 questions
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Associative Arrays
3:48You can assign your own keys to array elements -- and they don't have to be numbers. In fact, your code can be easier to read and understand if you use a name for a key. This is called an Associative Array, because a specific key is associated with a specific value.
The arrays we created so
far are all numerically indexed.
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In other words,
the first element is at position 0.
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The second element is at position 1.
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PHP automatically assigned
the numeric key for us to use.
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But you can assign your own
keys to an array element and
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they don't have to be numbers.
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In fact,
your code may be easier to read and
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understand if you use a name for a key.
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For example,
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if I wanted to create an array of
people's favorite ice cream flavors.
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It would be much easier to just
specify their name as the key.
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Alena likes black cherry,
Dave likes cookies and
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cream, Treasure likes chocolate.
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This is called an associative array
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because a specific key is
associated with a specific value.
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Let's jump into workspaces and
see how this works.
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Let's take a look at the results
of our indexed array again.
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We see the key on the left with a double
arrow separating the value on the right.
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We also use this double arrow
to format associative arrays.
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Let's create a new file
named associative_arrays.php
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Add the PHP tags.
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And we're ready to start with a fresh
array for our favorite ice cream.
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We'll name this iceCream and
we'll set it equal to an array.
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This time we want to start
by specifying our key.
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We'll start with Alena.
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Then we use the double arrow
followed by the value Black Cherry.
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Then just like we did
with the indexed arrays,
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we separate the element with the comma.
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Next we'll add Treasure.
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Followed by the double arrow and
chocolate.
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Add a comma for separation and
we'll add Dave.
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The double arrow and cookies and cream.
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And one more comma, Rialla followed
by the double arrow and strawberry.
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This array is getting pretty hard to read.
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I'll [INAUDIBLE] together and
wrapping to the next line.
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But PHP doesn't really
care about whitespace.
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So often times we can use
that to our advantage.
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Let's put each of these
elements on its own line.
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Using whitespace can make things
easier to read at a glance.
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Now let's var dump this array and
run our script.
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Now we see that our key is
the name of the person and
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the value is their favorite ice cream.
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We can pull the value of
an element by specifying the key.
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Echo $iceCream,
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Alena. Now,
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when we run the script, the first
thing we see is my favorite ice cream.
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Associative arrays can be extremely useful
and provide a lot of information but
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there are a few specifics that
you should know about array keys.
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In the next video,
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we'll take a closer look into mixing data
types in both array keys and values.
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