Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

PHP PHP Arrays and Control Structures PHP Arrays Multidimensional Arrays

ido sh
ido sh
3,926 Points
Posted by ido sh
ido sh
3,926 Points

how exactly I need to do it?

In the code below, we have a simple array of contact names. We want to use the $contacts array to fill in the hardcoded list of names an email addresses. To hold the email as well as the name for each contact, we need a multidimensional array, meaning each person in the contact list will have their own array. The first step is to make each person their own single item ASSOCIATIVE array, using 'name' as the key for these internal arrays.

index.php 
<?php
//edit this array
$contacts = array(array('Alena Holligan'),array( 'Dave McFarland'), array('Treasure Porth'), array('Andrew Chalkley'));

echo "<ul>\n";
//$contacts[0] will return 'Alena Holligan' in our simple array of names.
echo "<li>Alena Holligan : alena.holligan@teamtreehouse.com</li>\n";
echo "<li>Dave McFarland : dave.mcfarland@teamtreehouse.com</li>\n";
echo "<li>Treasure Porth : treasure.porth@teamtreehouse.com</li>\n";
echo "<li>Andrew Chalkley : andrew.chalkley@teamtreehouse.com</li>\n";
echo "</ul>\n";

1 Answer

Mike Wagner
Mike Wagner
23,559 Points

You can do it in many ways, either manually or programmatically. Using your code as a starting point,

$contacts = array(array('Alena Holligan'),array( 'Dave McFarland'), array('Treasure Porth'), array('Andrew Chalkley'));

all you would really need to do is define the "key" (my brain isn't working, but I think that's the right term in this context) of name like this

$contacts = array(array('name' => 'Alena Holligan'),array('name' =>  'Dave McFarland'), array('name' => 'Treasure Porth'), array('name' => 'Andrew Chalkley'));

Here is a little information that might help you come to grips with arrays in PHP