PHP - display 'X' items from foreach loop with link to display next 'X' items

Question

I have a foreach loop which loops through an array (simpleXML nodes). This array can have between 0 and several hundred items in it. I'd like to find a way to display the first 10 results and then have a link to display the next 10 and so on.

for instance, I currently have:

$i=0;
$limit=10;
foreach ($nodes as $node){
echo "here is the output: ".$node."<br>\n";
if (++$i >=$limit) break;
}

obviously, no matter how many items are in the $nodes array, it only displays the first 10. But I think I read that foreach loops reset the counter every time they run - so if I wanted to have a link that said: next 10 itmes - I'm not sure how I would tell the the loop to start on index=10.

Am I even barking up the right tree here?

Answer 1

You should use a regular for loop

if(count($nodes) < 10) {
   $nnodes = count($nodes);
} else {
   $nnodes = 10;
}

for($i = 0; $i < $nnodes; $i++) {
   echo $nodes[$i];
}

Answer 2

This is called pagination. You could extract the segment of the array that you need with array_slice: http://php.net/array_slice

<?php
$page = isset($_GET['page']) ? intval($_GET['page']) : 0;
$elementsPerPage = 10;
$elements = array_slice($nodes, $page * $elementsPerPage, $elementsPerPage);

foreach($elements as $node)
{
    echo "Here is the output: ".$node."<br>\n";
}

Then you only need a link that points to the same page with the argument ?page=$page+1

Answer 3

Well, you could use a LimitIterator...

$offset = (int) (isset($_GET['offset']) ? $_GET['offset'] : 0);
$limit = 10;
$arrayIterator = new ArrayIterator($nodes);
$limitIterator = new LimitIterator($arrayIterator, $offset, $limit);

$n = 0;
foreach ($limitIterator as $node) {
    $n++;
    //Display $node;
}
if ($n == 10) {
    echo '<a href="?offset='.($offset + 10).'">Next</a>';
}