Codeigniter: Make field increase by 1 up to a number?

Question

In my validation class I have this:

    $fields['a_1'] = 'First Question';
    $fields['a_2'] = 'Second Question';
    $fields['a_3'] = 'Third Question';
    $fields['a_4'] = 'Fourth Question';

This is getting old--I have about 40 of these to write, and each set has matching validation rules:

    $rules['a_1'] = 'hour';
    $rules['a_2'] = 'hour';
    ...

Is there a way to say:

$fields['a_' . 1 - 17] = "One, Two"

Etc...

Just curious... if not, I'll brute force it.

Answer 1

Can you just use a foreach loop with a range, as shown on this page?

foreach (range(1, 17) as $i) {
   $fields['a_' . $i] = "One, Two";
}

Or if you need to refer to values in another array:

$other_array = ("some", "other", "values");
foreach (range(1, count($other_array)) as $i) {
   $fields['a_' . $i] = $other_array[$i+1];
}

Answer 2

you can try this

$ar=array("One","Two","Three");

for($i=1;$i<18;$i++){
  $fields["a_".$i]=$ar[$i];
}

where $ar contains the list of values you want to assign in order

Answer 3

You might see if you can't change the question. $foo['a_1'] is often better written as $foo['a'][1] - this will make both construction and working with them easier -- foreach($foo['a'] as $item) do_stuff($item); is much easier than something like for($i=0; $i<$stop; $i++) do_stuff($foo['a_'.$i]);, and you can then using the array to store the validation rule (and any other relationship) alongside the item itself:

$foo['a'] = array(array('fieldname' => 'First Question', 'rule' => 'hour'));