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up vote 0 down vote favorite

I have two arrays. The first comes directly from my original data. Each item is a point for a timeline.

print_r($items)

returns

        Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [id] => 1173
            [month] => January
            [year] => 2013
            [description] => This is a test
            [link] => #
            [image] => http://s3.amazonaws.com/stockpr-test-store/esph2/db/Timeline/1173/image_resized.jpg
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [id] => 1183
            [month] => February
            [year] => 2013
            [description] => This is another test
            [link] => 
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [id] => 1193
            [month] => December
            [year] => 2012
            [description] => Testing another year
            [link] => #
        )

)

I have a second array that gets all the unique years from that array.

print_r($years)

returns

        Array
(
    [0] => 2013
    [2] => 2012
)

How can I then go through the years and then per year return the items that match that year?

So, for 2012, I would get [2] from the $items array. For 2013, I would get [0] and [1] from the $items array.

Am I going at this all wrong? All I want to do is have an output like this:

<h1>Timeline</h1>
<h2>2013</h2>
<ul>
  <li>ID No. 1173</li>
  <li>ID No. 1183</li>
</ul>
<h2>2012</h2>
<ul>
  <li>ID No. 1193</li>
</ul>

Edit:

Currently using:

<? foreach($years as $year) : ?> 
                <div class="year row clearfix" id="y-$year">
                    <h3><span><?= $year ?></span></h3>
    <? foreach($items as $item) : ?>
         <? if($item['year'] == $year) : ?>
                    <div class="item span5">
                        <div class="padding">
                            <div class="text">
                            <h4><?= $item['month']?> <?= $item['year'] ?></h4>
                            <p><?= $item['description'] ?></p>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
         <? endif; ?>
    <? endforeach; ?>
                </div>
<? endforeach; ?>

But it seems a little inefficient. From what I can understand, it's going through the full array every time it tries to output an item.

share|improve this question
2  
What have you tried? I'm guessing you're hoping to do this w/o looping? –  ernie Feb 15 '13 at 21:46
    
array_filter() should work. –  Pitchinnate Feb 15 '13 at 21:50
    
Looping is fine actually. Will update momentarily. I'm not a PHP developer by any means so I'm stuck more than anything. –  magzalez Feb 15 '13 at 21:52
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Heey,

I'm not sure if I undertood you question correctly but you can try this:

foreach($years as $aYear){ 
   foreach($items as $aItem){
     if($aItem['year'] == $aYear){
        echo $aItem['description'];
      }
   }
}
share|improve this answer
    
This works, but I'm not sure about it's efficiency. Does this go through all the items in the array every time? I guess, I thought it would be more efficient to get the year, then get all the items from that year once. then do a foreach on those before moving on to the next year. Does this go through the full set of items every time I output one item? –  magzalez Feb 15 '13 at 22:10
    
Its not the most efficient way indeed, let me think of a better way. Didn't use PHP for a few months :P –  Jasper Fioole Feb 15 '13 at 22:12
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up vote 0 down vote

Something like this should work:

$years = ['2013','2012'];

for ($i = 0; $i < count($items); $i++) 
{
  if (in_array($years, $items[$i]['year']))
  {
    // do something with $items[$i]
  }
}
share|improve this answer
add comment
up vote 0 down vote 
   //new array
 $array2 = array();
   foreach($array as $key)
   {
    $year =  $array[$key]['year'];
    //if year has already been used dont erase what's already in each part, add to it
   if(array_key_exists($year, $array2))
     {
       array_push($array2[$year]['ids'],$array[$key]['id']);
       //do rest
     }
   else 
     {
       //if year hasnt been set as a key yet, then it's empty
       $array2[$year]['ids'] = array($array[$key]['id']);
       //do rest of your vars to populate it
     }



   }

If you don't like hardcoding the keys, then feel free to use foreach and again check if used or not. If there's a possibility that not every index in your array(Like in your example) will have the same number/keys you'll have to double check before pushing that the nested array key exists.(id,description,month)

array 2 output should be:

Array(
   [2013] => array
   (
       [ids] => array
       ( 
         [0] => 1234
         [1] => 5667
       ) 
      [months] => array
      ( 
         [0] => January
      )
    )

)

Hopefully now your array is organized in a manner you can work with easier. Will test later.

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