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 Build a Simple PHP Application Listing Inventory Items More Excitement With Arrays

kevin wagner
PLUS
kevin wagner
Courses Plus Student 21,913 Points
Posted by kevin wagner
kevin wagner
Courses Plus Student 21,913 Points

Trouble understanding the foreach loop in the Olde Ice Cream Shoppe Tasks

I'm having trouble using a foreach loop to load the elements from the $flavors array into an variable named $flavor. I used the following

<ul> foreach($flavors as $flavor) { <li></li> <li></li> } </ul>

I receive an error telling me I need to be using a working variable name $flavor. It is my understanding that the variable inside of the parenthesis after 'as' is the working variable. I realize that I'm not really loading anything in the above code, but if I'm supposed to load the array elements individually into a variable named $flavor as the instructions indicate, how can I do so If my working variable also needs to be $flavor? Would that not be the same as $flavor = $flavor[]? I believe my confusion is with the logic.

Kevin

5 Answers

Ricardo Hill-Henry
Ricardo Hill-Henry
38,442 Points

A foreach loop's variable is only a temporary variable. The loop runs equivalent to $products' length. The variable $flavor is a temporary variable. It's value is updated every time the foreach loop kicks back to its beginning and runs; so $flavor wouldn't be $flavor[] exactly. Your logic for the foreach is fine. I assume you're not using PHP as they want you to in the challenge, with the tricky opening and closing loop braces. You want the loop to exist with the list items inside of it, so that they update each time through with the current item in the array, being equivalent to the counter of the loop.

  <?php foreach($flavors as $flavor){ ?>
    <li><?php echo $flavor1; ?></li>
    <li><?php echo $flavor2; ?></li>
  <?php } ?>
Hasan Pektas
Hasan Pektas
2,128 Points

The code won't work the variables $flavor1 and $flavor2 are not set. You should only echo $flavor.

Ricardo Hill-Henry
Ricardo Hill-Henry
38,442 Points

It will work in this case.. The following question is where you update the code to print out the current flavor. On this particular question they only want you to set it up. I'm aware that $flavor 1, and $flavor 2 has no value or reference to $flavor.

Hasan Pektas
Hasan Pektas
2,128 Points

Aha. I'm sorry, didn't know that...

Julian Price
Julian Price
11,760 Points
Julian Price
Julian Price
11,760 Points

I think I had similar issue in that series until I moved in to further in series that made Sense to challenge

Hasan Pektas
Hasan Pektas
2,128 Points
Hasan Pektas
Hasan Pektas
2,128 Points

The foreach loop will loop through each position in a array and the working variable will be set as the value in current position in the array.

A practical example:

$fruitsArray = ["Banana", "Apple", "Pear"];

foreach ($fruitsArray as $fruit) {

    echo $fruit . "\n";

}

This code will display:

Banana

Apple

Pear

This is what "happens" (except that the $fruit variable is local which means it is only available in the loop):

$fruitsArray = ["Banana", "Apple", "Pear"];

$fruit = $fruitsArray[0]; // value is "Banana" in array position 0

echo $fruit . "\n";

$fruit = $fruitsArray[1]; // value is "Apple" in array position 1

echo $fruit . "\n";

$fruit = $fruitsArray[2]; // value is "Pear" in array position 2

echo $fruit . "\n";

Remaking the foreach loop to a regular for-loop:

$fruitsArray = ["Banana", "Apple", "Pear"];

for ($i = 0; i < sizeof($fruitsArray); $i++) {

  $fruit = $fruitsArray[$i];

  echo $fruit . "\n";

}

Hope this helps you understand the logic!

kevin wagner
PLUS
kevin wagner
Courses Plus Student 21,913 Points
kevin wagner
kevin wagner
Courses Plus Student 21,913 Points

This worked! You're right, the placement of the curly braces was throwing me off. Adding to that confusion as well were the two list item variables that had not been declared, but now I understand that this challenge allows for the solution to be applied in small steps. Thanks for the help!

Hampton Paulk
Hampton Paulk
5,093 Points

Hi Kevin,

Would you mind clicking the 'best answer' link on the answer that helped you?