How to parse this complex array in PHP?

Question

I have this structure coming from an array dump:

0 => 
object(stdClass)[3]
 public 'start' => string '12:30:00' (length=8)
 public 'end' => string '12:45:00' (length=8)
 public 'structure' => 
 object(stdClass)[5]
 public 'structure_id' => int 5
 public 'structure_name' => string 'LABORATORY 1' (length=18)
 public 'specialist' => 
 object(stdClass)[6]
 public 'specialist_id' => int 222
 public 'specialist_surname' => string 'Smith' (length=7)
 public 'specialist_name' => string 'John' (length=9)
 public 'specialist_signature' => string 'Dr.' (length=3)
 public 'price' => float 80.5
1 => 
object(stdClass)[3]
 public 'start' => string '12:30:00' (length=8)
 public 'end' => string '12:45:00' (length=8)
 public 'structure' => 
 object(stdClass)[5]
 public 'structure_id' => int 5
 public 'structure_name' => string 'LABORATORY 4' (length=18)
 public 'specialist' => 
 object(stdClass)[6]
 public 'specialist_id' => int 222
 public 'specialist_surname' => string 'White' (length=7)
 public 'specialist_name' => string 'Jack' (length=9)
 public 'specialist_signature' => string 'Dr.' (length=3)
 public 'price' => float 80.5
2 => 
object(stdClass)[3]
 public 'start' => string '12:30:00' (length=8)
 public 'end' => string '12:45:00' (length=8)
 public 'structure' => 
 object(stdClass)[5]
 public 'structure_id' => int 5
 public 'structure_name' => string 'LABORATORY 9' (length=18)
 public 'specialist' => 
 object(stdClass)[6]
 public 'specialist_id' => int 222
 public 'specialist_surname' => string 'Brown' (length=7)
 public 'specialist_name' => string 'Lester' (length=9)
 public 'specialist_signature' => string 'Dr.' (length=3)
 public 'price' => float 80.5

How to parse it with PHP? In particular, I would like to assign values to normal PHP variables in order to print them or to put into an HTML table.

• user796443: Can you just do print_r?
• Mark Baker: Why go through all the overhead of assigning values from this array of objects to variables; just access them as they are when you need them

Answer 1

You can access this structure like this

echo $object[0]->start;
echo $object[0]->end;
echo $object[0]->structure->specialist_id;

This will result

12:30:00
12:45:00
5

Why do you need variables for this? That will result in too many vars. Instead use a loop to iterate over the object and access the inner objects using "->"

• DeepVoid: Great,Jabran!!! :-) I define $object by passing to this variable the object coming from the array (which is actually a JSONed array). So I've solved this way: $object = json_decode($response->result); $response->result comes from a CURL call, which queries a web service and get 'result' in return. Again, thank you!!! :-)

Answer 2

You need to make use of the extract() on PHP

<?php
$size = "large";
$var_array = array("color" => "blue",
 "size" => "medium",
 "shape" => "sphere");
extract($var_array, EXTR_PREFIX_SAME, "wddx");
echo "$color, $size, $shape, $wddx_size\n";
?>

OUTPUT :blue, large, sphere, medium