PHP array problem

Question

Every time I try to display the category I get the name Array instead of the category name. I was wondering how can I display the category names from my code below?

$list = array();
$cat = array();
$query = mysqli_query($dbc,"SELECT id, parent_id, category FROM categories ORDER BY parent_id, category LIKE category ASC");
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query)){
    $list[$row['id']] = array_merge($row, array('children' => array()));
}
mysqli_free_result($query);

foreach($list as $nodeId => &$node) {
    if(!$node['parent_id'] || !array_key_exists($node['parent_id'], $list)){
        $cat[] = &$node;
    } else {
        $list[$node['parent_id']]['children'][] = &$node;
    }
}
unset($node);
unset($list);

Var dump output example.

array
  0 => &
    array
      'id' => string '1' (length=1)
      'parent_id' => string '0' (length=1)
      'category' => string 'Cat-1' (length=5)
      'children' => 
        array
          0 => &
            array
              ...
          1 => &
            array
              ...
          2 => &
            array
              ...

Answer 1

When you echo a variable, and the browser display's "Array", you need to go another level deeper to access the array elements. You may have tried this already, but var_dump() your category array to view the structure of your array and verify it is what you expected it to be. YOu will be able to analyze your apparent multi-dimensional array to judge how many loops you need to get to the category names.

Update:

to go a level deeper, you need nested loops. for example:

foreach($first_level as $first){
    foreach($first as $second_level){
        echo $second_level;
    }
}

Answer 2

This might or might not be your problem:

    $cat[] = &$node;

If you just want the category names, then you'd likely need to use:

    $cat[] = $node["category"];

When you otherwise print the list out, the subarrays will be converted into "Array" in string context.

Answer 3

I don't get that LIKE category ASC at the end of your query what is it supposed to do? otherwise Itay Moav is right var_dump it :) there are loads of really cool function to display var_dump correctly on the php manual page.