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I'm trying to make a universal script that adds keywords to my individual pages (since header is in an include file) so I am getting the end of the url (multi.php) and retrieving the desc etc. from it's array. For some reason instead of returning keywords or descriptions it instead just returns "m" . . . it's kind of random and has me scratching my head. Here's what I got

<html>
<head>
    <title>Multi-Demensional Array</title>
<?php

$path = pathinfo($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
$allyourbase = $path['basename'];

$pages = array
(
    "multi.php" => array
    (
        "keywords"  => "index, home, test, etc",
        "desc"      => "This is the INDEX page",
        "style"     => "index.css"
    ),

    "header.php" => array
    (
        "keywords"  => "showcase, movies, vidya, etc",
        "desc"      => "SHOWCASE page is where we view vidya.",
        "style"     => "showcase.css"
    )
);



?>
</head>
<body>

<?php 

foreach($pages as $key => $value)
{
    if($key == $allyourbase)
    {
        echo $key['desc'];
    }
}

?> 

</body>
</html>
share|improve this question
    
Not random at all, it's a symptom because strings are character arrays in php. So generally if you get a character when you're expecting a phrase you should check whether you're calling for a numeric array key on a string accidentally. –  Kzqai Jun 25 '11 at 4:05

4 Answers 4

up vote 2 down vote accepted

The reason why this is happening is because in PHP if I had the following code:

$hello = 'world';

and I attempted to do the following:

echo $hello[0];

PHP Would treat the string as an array and return me whatever is in position 0, which would result in w, when your using a foreach your asking PHP to set the key of the array to $key, and it's value to $value.

you then echo echo $key['desc'];, as the value is a string, php sees it as an integer based index, so it will ignore your call for desc and then return the first index, if you were to change echo $key['desc'] to echo $value['desc'] which is a hash based array it will return the desired results.

You should just be able to do this:

if(isset($pages[$allyourbase]))
{
    echo $pages[$allyourbase]['desc'];
}

No need for the loop

share|improve this answer
    
That's great. Good explanation too that completely makes sense now! Thanks! –  Howdy_McGee Jun 25 '11 at 4:14
up vote 1 down vote

try

 echo $key['desc'];

replace with

echo $value['desc'];
share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Other people have provided some great solutions, but it's important that you understand exactly what is happening here, so you don't make the same mistake again. Pay careful attention to the comments, and you will be on your way to successful coding!

Here's what is happening:

foreach ($pages as $key => $value) {
    if ($key == $allyourbase) {
        // At this point: $key = 'multi.php'
        // Also: $value = array( ... );

        // Keep in mind: $key['desc'] = $key[0] = 'm';
        // You are grabbing the first letter of the 'multi.php' string.

        // When dealing with strings, PHP sees $key['desc'] as $key[0],
        // which is another way to grab the very first character of 'multi.php'

        echo $key['desc'];

        // You really want $pages[$key]['desc'], but below 
        // is a better way to do it, without the overhead of
        // the loop.
    }
}

If you kept the loop, which is really unnecessary, it would look like this:

foreach ($pages as $key => $value) {
    if ($key == $allyourbase) {
        echo $value['desc'];
    }
}

The best solution is to replace the loop with the following code:

if (isset($pages[$allyourbase])) {
    echo $pages[$allyourbase]['desc'];
} else {
    // error handling
}
share|improve this answer
    
That's a great explanation also. Thanks! Is the "isset()" really necessary though? –  Howdy_McGee Jun 25 '11 at 5:27
    
(No problem! I appreciate the feedback.) In my opinion, yes. If $pages[$allyourbase] is not defined, it will throw an Notice: Undefined index error. Additionally, the gentleman is pulling information directly from the $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] variable, without any filtering. This also allows the gentleman to implement error handling if someone is requesting a page that has not been defined. –  webjawns.com Jun 25 '11 at 5:40
    
ah gotcha. Thanks! –  Howdy_McGee Jun 25 '11 at 18:13
up vote 0 down vote

If I'm reading this right, echo $key['desc']; should be echo $value['desc'];.

share|improve this answer

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