Question

I am coding a PHP foreach loop. I am using the following code to ensure that only 3 items are grouped into a .slide div container.

<?php 
$count = 0;
foreach ($listing as $item):?>
<div class='slide>

  <div class='item'>Item</div>

<?php if ($count++ % 3 == 1 ): ?>
</div>
<div class="slide">
<?php endif; ?>

<?php endforeach ?>

I need to always have 3 items per group. What is the best way to add items from the start of the array to fill up the remaining items?

EDIT:

An example of the markup I need is:

<div class='slide'>
  <div class='item'>Item 1</div>
  <div class='item'>Item 2</div>
  <div class='item'>Item 3</div>
</div>
<div class='slide'>
  <div class='item'>Item 4</div>
  <div class='item'>Item 1</div>
  <div class='item'>Item 2</div>
</div>

So if there is not 3 items per .slide the array starts again to fill it up.

Answer 1

One simple solution is to append 1 or 2 items (if required) to the $listing variable before the loop.

if (count($listing)%3!=0) {
    //Append 1 or 2 items from start of array if needed
    $listing = array_merge($listing, array_slice($listing, 0, 3-count($listing)%3));
}

The array_slice call returns an array containing items from 0 to 3 - (size of array) mod 3 (either 1 or 2). The array_merge function then adds these 1 or 2 items to the original $listing array. The complete code (with some other minor improvements/fixes) is below:

<?php 
    $count = 0;
    $listing = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7);
    if (count($listing)%3!=0) {
        //Append 1 or 2 items from start of array if needed
        $listing = array_merge($listing, array_slice($listing, 0, 3-count($listing)%3));
    }
    ?><div class='slide'> <?php
    foreach ($listing as $item):
        if (($count>0) and ($count%3==0)):
            ?></div><div class="slide"><?php
        endif; 
        ?><div class='item'>Item <?=$item?></div><?php
        $count++;
    endforeach;
    ?></div><?php
?>

Depending on your data, you might need to add special checks for the case where the original $listing has 0 or 1 items. Also, probably a good idea not to modify the original array and instead use a copy to append items to and use in the foreach loop.