Troubles displaying an associative array with PHP and HTML

Question

Hello,

I have the following HTML code:

<div id="newsTicker">
    <span class="icon news"></span>
        <ul>
            [repeating structure]
            <li>
                <ul>
                    <li><a href="#">News 1</a></li>
                    <li><a href="#">News 2</a></li>
                    <li><a href="#">News 3</a></li>
                </ul>
            </li>               
            [/repeating structure]          
        </ul>
</div><!--/#newsTicker-->

I also have a PHP array:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [id] => 5
            [title] => Concert Aria Urbana
            [link] => http://www.searadeseara.ro/detalii-eveniment/aria-urbana-9.html
            [date] => 2010-05-22 14:59:20
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [id] => 4
            [title] => Poze Tequila Party
            [link] => http://www.searadeseara.ro/detalii-galerie/tequila-party-3/
            [date] => 2010-05-22 14:58:56
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [id] => 3
            [title] => Psyche este utilizatorul saptamanii
            [link] => http://www.searadeseara.ro/profil/1-Psyche.html
            [date] => 2010-05-22 14:48:03
        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [id] => 2
            [title] => Galerie foto Summer Party
            [link] => http://www.searadeseara.ro/detalii-galerie/summer-party-8/
            [date] => 2010-05-22 14:25:13
        )

    [4] => Array
        (
            [id] => 1
            [title] => Concert Massive Attack
            [link] => http://www.searadeseara.ro/detalii-eveniment/massive-attack-revin-la-bucuresti-13.html
            [date] => 2010-05-22 14:24:37
        )

)

I would like to know how can I repeat that code inside [repeating structure] and display 3 different news for each repeating structure.

The output must be like this:

<div id="newsTicker">
    <span class="icon news"></span>
        <ul>            
            <li>
                <ul>
                    <li><a href="#">Concert Aria Urbana</a></li>
                    <li><a href="#">Poze Tequila Party</a></li>
                    <li><a href="#">Psyche este utilizatorul saptamanii</a></li>
                </ul>
            </li>               
            <li>
                <ul>
                    <li><a href="#">Galerie foto Summer Party</a></li>
                    <li><a href="#">Concert Massive Attack</a></li>                    
                </ul>
            </li>

        </ul>
</div><!--/#newsTicker-->

Thank you.

Answer 1

Your questions doesn't really make sense; but to get a list of the news items in your array you'd want to do something like this

<div id="newsTicker">
    <span class="icon news"></span>
        <ul>
            <li>
                <ul>
        <?php
        foreach ($newsArray as $newsItem ){
            echo '<li><a href="'.$newsItem['link'].'">'.$newsItem['title'].'</a></li>';
        }
        ?> </ul>
        </li>
    </ul>
</div>

Answer 2

You did not answer my question about the lack of the second dimension in your data - I figured you might be wishing to slice the flat list into chunks of three (a hint from "news ticker" comment at the end was mildly helpful). If that's so, this should work as long as $items is a real array (i.e. has consecutive indices starting from 0):

<div id="newsTicker">
    <span class="icon news"></span>
        <ul>
<?php
  $outer = 0;
  $count = count($items);
  while ($outer < count($items)) {
?>
            <li>
                <ul>
<?php
    for ($inner = 0; $inner < 3 && $outer < $count; $inner++, $outer++) {
        echo '<li><a href="' 
            . $items[$outer]['link'] . '">'
            . $items[$outer]['title'] . "</a></li>\n";
    }
?>
                </ul>
            </li>
<?php
  }
?>
        </ul>
</div><!--/#newsTicker-->

Answer 3

Split the data into an array of arrays of 3 elements :

$news = // Your big array
define('NUM_NEWS_PER_GROUP', 3);

$newsGroups = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < count($news); $i += NUM_NEWS_PER_GROUP) {
     $newsGroups[] = array_slice($news, $i, NUM_NEWS_PER_GROUP);
}

Then, to display it :

<ul>            
<?php foreach ($newsGroups as $newsGroup) : ?>
    <li>
        <ul>
        <?php foreach ($newsGroup as $item) : ?>
            <li><a href="#"><?php echo $item['title'] ?></a></li>
        <?php endforeach; ?>
        </ul>
     </li>
 <?php endforeach; ?>           
 </ul>

This way, when you change your mind and want 4 news per group, you juste change the constant value.

Answer 4

Assuming that you’re having an array with numeric keys, try this:

<ul>
<?php
foreach ($arr as $key => $item) {
    // start new list if $key is divisible by 3
    if ($key % 3 == 0) {
        echo '<li><ul>';
    }

    echo '<li><a href="…">…</a></li>';

    // end list if the next $key will start a new list
    if (($key + 1) % 3 == 0) {
        echo '</ul></li>';
    }
}

// end list if the last iteration did not do it
if (($key + 1) % 3 != 0) {
        echo '</ul></li>';
}
?>
</ul>