php foreach help

Question

I have a dataset with 4 rows. I am using 2 foreach loops to get my data out. The outer foreach needs to loop once and I need the inner loop to loop 4x. Is there a way to do this or do I need to split the array?

 foreach($reports as $key=>$val)
 {
 if($val['rpt_type'] == 'Sooa')
 {
 foreach($val as $foo)
 {
 echo $foo['name'];
 }
 }
 }

• SilentGhost: you might want to add some code to your question, it's very unclear what's going on
• SilentGhost: ok, so what's the problem with this code?
• Tom: The outer loop loops more than once. I need it to loop only once
• Tom: :) So break out at the end of the first loop, right?
• SilentGhost: well, what other options are there?

Answer 1

I'm still unsure about how your data structure looks. To me, to be able to utilize a "rpt_type", it would have to look something like this:

$reports = array(
 0 => array(
 'rpt_type' => '...',
 ...
 'rows' => array(
 'name' => '...',
 ...
 ),
 ),
 1 => ...
);

You could then iterate over it with:

foreach($reports as $report) {
 if($report['rpt_type'] == 'Sooa') {
 foreach($report['rows'] as $row) {
 echo $row['name'];
 }
 }
}

Answer 2

First, check the contents of your $reports variable, using var_dump function of php:

var_dump($reports);

It'll print something like this:

array(3) {
 [0]=>
 int(1)
 [1]=>
 int(2)
 [2]=>
 array(3) {
 [0]=>
 string(1) "a"
 [1]=>
 string(1) "b"
 [2]=>
 string(1) "c"
 }
}

Then you can implement your loop looking at the actual data you have, in whichever way your jagged arrays are formed.