Question

I have a small function below that accepts associative arrays and I’m struggling to find a way to modify it to accept simpler arrays. It would be easy to create a separate function and remove a foreach loop, but I’m trying to see if there is a more efficient way to achieve this. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Function:

public function set_content($file, $data, $section_name)
{
  $jobs = new Template_Engine();
  $jobs->set_file($file);
  $jobs_output = '';

  static $section_title = 0;
  foreach($data as $job)
  {
      //print_r($job);
      foreach($job as $key=>$value)
      {
          $jobs->set($key,$value);
      }

      if ($section_title === 0) 
      {
          $jobs->set("section_title",$section_name);
      }
      else 
      {
          $jobs->clear_set("section_title");    
      }

      ++$section_title;
      $jobs_output .=  $jobs->output();
  }

  $section_title = 0;
  return $jobs_output;
}

Array Sample 1:

Array ( [0] => Array ( [custom_id] => 78 [name] => Title Goes [description] => Test [resume_id] => 96 [order_id] => 0 [section_id] => 224 [profile_id] => 38 [user_id] => 1 [vanity_name] => Sample of Template 3 [template_id] => 3 [date_add] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 [date_mod] => 2012-03-04 11:00:05 ) [1] => Array ( [custom_id] => 76 [name] => A Custom Item [description] => A descrition for a custom item goes here. [resume_id] => 96 [order_id] => 1 [section_id] => 224 [profile_id] => 38 [user_id] => 1 [vanity_name] => Sample of Template 3 [template_id] => 3 [date_add] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 [date_mod] => 2012-03-04 11:00:05 ) )

Array Sample 2:

Array ( [list_item] => EnglishSpanishFrenchCatalanJapanese )

Answer 1

Add an IF before the foreach($job as $key=>$value) to check if the first item is an array or not:

...
if (is_array($job)) {
  foreach($job as $key=>$value)
  {
    $jobs->set($key,$value);
  }
} else {
  // treat here the value of the more simpler array; 
  // in this case, $job would contain EnglishSpanishFrenchCatalanJapanese
}
...