php arrays - not getting expected output

Question

I have a piece of code that is supposed to grab categories, sort them alphabetically (they're available in several languages) as well as return a count for each of them. The problem is, for some reason the count isn't returned at all. I feel like the problem is somewhere around this line:

(($categoryCounter) ? '<span class="cnt">(' . $categoryCounter . ')</span>' : '') .

I tried changing it to $categoryCounter[$key] or something but that didn't work. Unfortunately my PHP skills are not good enough to find out what I'm doing wrong. If anyone can see what I'm obviously doing wrong I'd greatly appreciate some help :)

Here is the complete code;

while ($cat_details = $db->fetch_array($sql_select_categories)) 
{
    $categoryCounter = (COUNT_CATS == 1 && !empty($src_details['keywords_search'])) ? $cat_counter[$cat_details['category_id']] : $cat_details['items_counter'];
    if ($categoryCounter > 0 || COUNT_CATS == 0) {
        $cat_array[$cat_details['category_id']]["name"]=$category_lang[$cat_details['category_id']];
    }
}

if (is_array($cat_array)) {

    asort($cat_array);

    foreach($cat_array as $key => $value){

        $output .= '<tr> '.
        '   <td class="contentfont"><a href="' . $subcat_link . '">' . $category_lang[$key] . '</a> '.
        (($categoryCounter) ? '<span class="cnt">(' . $categoryCounter . ')</span>' : '') .
    ' </td> '.
    '</tr> ';

    }
}

Answer 1

If $categoryCounter is "0", then the condition ($categoryCounter) will be false, so you with your posted code, an empty string will be outputted, instead of the <span tag you are expecting.

Answer 2

This can't be the entire code as a few things aren't defined. Why does COUNT_CATS not start with a $? What is the layout of the $cat_array object? Are there multiple columns or is "name" the only column?

First up, try adding the $ to the front of these:

$COUNT_CATS == 1
$COUNT_CATS == 0

From what I can tell from what you provided, $categoryCounter will be the highest value from your loop starting with:

while ($cat_details = $db->fetch_array($sql_select_categories)) 

But currently you may not ever set the $cat_array as $categoryCounter may never be anything other than 0, and COUNT_CATS may or may not be valid.

Also, the $cat_array object could be assigned without the ["name"] part, i.e.

$cat_array[$cat_details['category_id']]=$category_lang[$cat_details['category_id']];

This would then have $cat_array[id]=$category_lang[id], which would then be sorted fine via the asort function. $cat_array[id]["name"]=$category_lang[id] would be sorted differently as it is now a multi-dimensional array.