John Davidson

Message:

I have a number of arrays like so:

$fruitArray = array(

 "orange" => "orange",

 "banana" => "yellow",

 "apple" => "green"

);



$carsArray = array(

 "ford" => array (

   "truck" => "big",

   "car" => "small"

 ),

 "mazda" => "yellow",

 "toyota" => "green"

);

Normally I could just use var_dump($carsArray[ford]) but I don't know which parts I need.
But I can get the names from other variables. For example,

$firstWordInArrayName = cars;

$carType = ford;

I want to create a variable that allows me to access the a specific array like so:

$variableToCallArrayName = '$' . $firstWordInArrayName . 'Array[' . $cartype . ']';

var_dump($variableToCallArrayName)

Is this a good way of doing this or is there some other way of doing this?
And if it is okay, how do I do it please?

---

My Answer:
You can use variable variables in PHP to achieve this. Here's how you can modify your code to call a variable from a string with the same name:

php
$fruitArray = array(
"orange" => "orange",
"banana" => "yellow",
"apple" => "green"
);

$carsArray = array(
"ford" => array (
"truck" => "big",
"car" => "small"
),
"mazda" => "yellow",
"toyota" => "green"
);

$firstWordInArrayName = "cars";
$carType = "ford";

$variableToCallArrayName = ${$firstWordInArrayName . 'Array'}[$carType];
var_dump($variableToCallArrayName);


In this code, `${$firstWordInArrayName . 'Array'}` creates a variable variable by concatenating the value of `$firstWordInArrayName` with the string 'Array' and then using it as a variable name to access the corresponding array.