Question

Hi I would like to limit the results returned depending on what type of product a user selects, $r[1] is the type of product with the array:

    foreach($list as $r) 
{ 
$row_color = ($row_count % 2) ? $color1 : $color2; 
$size2 = $r[2]; 
 echo "<tr>
        <td id=\"id\"><span id=\"non_sorting_header\">" .$r[0]. "</span></td>
        <td id=\"name\"><span id=\"non_sorting_header\">" .$r[1]. "</span></td>
        <td id=\"speed\"><span id=\"sorting_header\">" .kMGTB2($size2). "</span></td>
        <td id=\"download\"><span id=\"sorting_header\">" .$r[3]. " Gb<br />per month</span></td>
        <td id=\"contract\"><span id=\"sorting_header\">1<br />month</span></td>
        <td id=\"info\"><span id=\"non_sorting_header\">".$r[5]."</span></td>
        <td id=\"buy\"><span id=\"non_sorting_header\">".$r[4]."<br />".$r[6]."</span></td>
      </tr>"; 
$row_count++; 
} 

So if the user enters ‘banana’ then the function will find all instances within the array where $r[1] starts with the word ‘banana’ – start is key as it could be ‘banana 1’ ‘banana 2’ etc….

I cannot figure out a slick way to do this…any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

You could use something like the following

function selectFromArray($prefix="", $productArray=array()) {

    return array_filter($productArray,
        create_function('$element', 
             'return (stripos($element[1],"'.$prefix.'") === 0); '));
}

Used like:

$list = selectFromArray("Banana", $list);

then proceed with the rest of your page.

That said, it’s usually better to do this kind of filtering in your sql query with a WHERE clause