PHP Associative Arrays Coding Style

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No PHP programmer writes code without arrays. Sound strange, but as many programmers there are, as many ways to format the array notation there are.

My advice is to rely on a defined standard. I personally use the Zend Framework’s coding style.

So how to format the code? The first way is on the same line:

$myArray = array('key1' => 'value1',
		 'key2' => 'value2');

And the other, perhaps more clear way is to place the associative pairs on a new line:

$myArray = array(
	'key1' => 'value1',
	'key2' => 'value2',
);

Note that in the second example there’s a comma after the second pair. This is correct PHP syntax and is strongly encouraged!

It’s up to you which way to take. However it mainly depends on the case, but please use standards.

PHP: The Array Element Doesn’t Exist – Suppress the Warnings

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What’s the problem?

If you code PHP from couple of hours you are probably familiar with the following problem:

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<?php
 
	error_reporting(E_ALL);
 
	$arr = array();
 
	echo $arr[3];
 
?>

The first and most common solution is just by adding the isset() statement and the code will look like that:

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<?php
 
	error_reporting(E_ALL);
 
	$arr = array();
 
        if (isset($arr[3]))
	        echo $arr[3];
 
?>

However do you know there’s is another simple and elegant solution? Simply add the @ sign to suppress the element existence

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<?php
 
	error_reporting(E_ALL);
 
	$arr = array();
 
	echo @$arr[3];
 
?>

Debugging in Zend Framework

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Perhaps “debugging” is a bit too strong. However when you’re dumping an array in PHP, you’d probably prefer the print_r or var_dump.

echo '<pre>';
print_r($array);
echo '</pre>';

But did you know that in Zend Framework there’s a built in Zend_Debug?

Zend_Debug::dump($array);

Does pretty much the same thing!