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7

I'm looking to write a function that takes an array of pages/categories (from a flat database result) and generates an array of nested page/category items based on the parent ids. I would like to do this recursively, so that any level of nesting can be done.

For example: I'm fetching all the pages in one query, and this is the what the database table looks like

+-------+---------------+---------------------------+
|   id  |   parent_id   |           title           |
+-------+---------------+---------------------------+
|   1   |       0       |   Parent Page             |
|   2   |       1       |   Sub Page                |
|   3   |       2       |   Sub Sub Page            |
|   4   |       0       |   Another Parent Page     |
+-------+---------------+---------------------------+

And this is the array I would like to end up with to process in my view files:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [id] => 1
            [parent_id] => 0
            [title] => Parent Page
            [children] => Array
                        (
                            [0] => Array
                                (
                                    [id] => 2
                                    [parent_id] => 1
                                    [title] => Sub Page
                                    [children] => Array
                                                (
                                                    [0] => Array
                                                        (
                                                            [id] => 3
                                                            [parent_id] => 1
                                                            [title] => Sub Sub Page
                                                        )
                                                )
                                )
                        )
        )
    [1] => Array
        (
            [id] => 4
            [parent_id] => 0
            [title] => Another Parent Page
        )
)

I've looked and tried nearly every solution I've come across (there's a lot of them here on Stack Overflow, but have had no luck getting something generic enough that will work for both pages and categories.

Here's the closest I've gotten, but it doesn't work because I'm assigning the children to the first level parent.

function page_walk($array, $parent_id = FALSE)
{   
    $organized_pages = array();

    $children = array();

    foreach($array as $index => $page)
    {
        if ( $page['parent_id'] == 0) // No, just spit it out and you're done
        {
            $organized_pages[$index] = $page;
        }
        else // If it does, 
        {       
            $organized_pages[$parent_id]['children'][$page['id']] = $this->page_walk($page, $parent_id);
        }
    }

    return $organized_pages;
}

function page_list($array)
{       
    $fakepages = array();
    $fakepages[0] = array('id' => 1, 'parent_id' => 0, 'title' => 'Parent Page');
    $fakepages[1] = array('id' => 2, 'parent_id' => 1, 'title' => 'Sub Page');
    $fakepages[2] = array('id' => 3, 'parent_id' => 2, 'title' => 'Sub Sub Page');
    $fakepages[3] = array('id' => 4, 'parent_id' => 3, 'title' => 'Another Parent Page');

    $pages = $this->page_walk($fakepages, 0);

    print_r($pages);
}
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Can't you just work with an array of all parent_ids and another array for your pages? – djot Dec 21 '11 at 9:17
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2 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

Some very simple, generic tree building:

function buildTree(array $elements, $parentId = 0) {
    $branch = array();

    foreach ($elements as $element) {
        if ($element['parent_id'] == $parentId) {
            $children = buildTree($elements, $element['id']);
            if ($children) {
                $element['children'] = $children;
            }
            $branch[] = $element;
        }
    }

    return $branch;
}

$tree = buildTree($rows);
share|improve this answer
This works perfectly. I can see where I went wrong in my version's logic. Way to rock it! I haven't needed to use recursion very often in projects, so this certainly helps a ton. – David Hemphill Dec 21 '11 at 9:33
Glad it helps. To note: this is somewhat inefficient since it always passes the whole $elements array down. For small arrays that hardly matters, but for large data sets you'll want to remove the already matched element from it before passing it down. That becomes somewhat messy though, so I left it simple for your easier understanding. :) – deceze Dec 21 '11 at 9:36
3  
@deceze I would like to see the messy version as well. Thanks in advance! – Jens Törnell Jan 24 at 13:37
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up vote 0 down vote

It is possible to use php to get the mysql result into array and then use it.

$categoryArr = Array();
while($categoryRow = mysql_fetch_array($category_query_result)){
    $categoryArr[] = array('parentid'=>$categoryRow['parent_id'],
            'id'=>$categoryRow['id']);
   }
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