PHP Associative Arrays
Associative arrays are arrays that use named keys that you assign to them.
There are two ways to create an associative array:
$age = array["Peter"=>"35", "Ben"=>"37", "Joe"=>"43"];
or:
$age['Peter'] = "35";
$age['Ben'] = "37";
$age['Joe'] = "43";
The named keys can then be used in a script:
Example
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Loop Through an Associative Array
To loop through and print all the values of an associative array, you could use a foreach loop, like this:
Example
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Complete PHP Array Reference
For a complete reference of all array functions, go to our complete PHP Array Reference.
The reference contains a brief description, and examples of use, for each function!
PHP Exercises
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Associative arrays are used to store key value pairs. For example, to store the marks of different subject of a student in an array, a numerically indexed array would not be the best choice. Instead, we could use the respective subject’s names as the keys in our associative array, and the value would be their respective marks gained.
Example:
Here array[] function is used to create associative array.
Output:
Marks for student one is: Maths:95 Physics:90 Chemistry:96 English:93 Computer:98
Traversing the Associative Array:
We can traverse associative arrays using loops. We can loop through the associative array in two ways. First by using for loop and secondly by using
foreach.
Example:
Here array_keys[] function is used to find indices names given to them and count[] function is used to count number of indices in associative arrays.
Output:
Looping using foreach: Student one got 95 in Maths Student one got 90 in Physics Student one got 96 in Chemistry Student one got 93 in English Student one got 98 in Computer Looping using for: Maths 95 Physics 90 Chemistry 96 English 93 Computer 98
Creating an associative array of mixed types
Output:
xyz==>95 100==>abc 11==>100 abc==>pqr
PHP is a server-side scripting language designed specifically for web development. You can learn PHP from the ground up by following this PHP Tutorial and PHP Examples.