PHP: less ugly syntax for named parameters / arrays?

Question

Here's what I am trying to accomplish:

function foo($args) {
 switch($args['type']) {
  case 'bar':
  bar($args['data']);   // do something
  break;
 }
}

// or something like that

Which is basically a way of using named parameters in PHP.

Now, in order to build this $args array, I am forced to write ugly syntax like:

$builtArgs = array('type' => 'bar',
     'data' => array(1, 2, 3),
     'data2' => array(5, 10, 20)
  );

foo($builtArgs);

Which gets uglier as I add more dimensions to the array, and also forces me to write tons of array(...) constructs. Is there a prettier way to do this?

For one thing, it could be done if we could use Python-like syntax:

$buildArgs = {'type' : 'bar', 'data' : [1, 2, 3], 'data2' : [5, 10, 20]};

But it is PHP.

Answer 1

No. Alternative syntaxes for creating arrays have been proposed several times (the link lists 5 separate threads in the dev mailing list), but they were rejected.

Answer 2

No, there is no "short-syntax" to write arrays nor objects, in PHP : you have to write all those array().
(At least, there is no such syntax... yet ; might come in a future version of PHP ; who knows ^^ )

But note that have too many imbricated arrays like that will makes things harder for people who will have to call your functions : using real-parameters means auto-completion and type-hinting in the IDE...

Answer 3

There are no alternatives to constructing these nested arrays-- but there are options in how you can format your code that makes it readable. This is strictly preference:

return array
(
    'text' => array
    (
        'name'      => 'this is the second',
        'this'      => 'this is the third',
        'newarr'    => array
        (
            'example'
        ),
    )
);


// Or using the long way

$array = array();

$array += array
(
    'this' => 'is the first array'
);

Answer 4

You could create a JSON-encoded string and use json_decode() to convert it into a variable. This has syntax very similar to the Python-like syntax you mentioned.

$argstr = '{"type" : "bar", "data" : [1, 2, 3], "data2" : [5, 10, 20]}';
$buildArgs = json_decode($argstr, true);

EDIT: Updated code to accommodate @therefromhere's suggestion.