Question

I have always sucked at complex arrays there must be something in my brain preventing me from ever understanding them. I will try to make this example really simple so we will not go off topic. I use this code to use numbers to represent each file name:

$mod_nums = array('1' => $input_zip_path . '01_mod_1.0.2.zip',

                  '2' => $input_zip_path . '02_mod_1.0.1.zip',
);

So when I use $mod_nums[’01’] it will display the path to that file. I have an array from the script that put these $mod_nums values into an array like so:

$files_to_zip = array(
    $mod_nums['1'],
    $mod_nums['2']
);

That worked fine. Now I wanted to add a $_POST value so that I can enter numbers like 1,2 and other numbers that I add to the $mod_nums array later like 1,3,6,12 for example. So I used an explode for those posted values:

$explode_mods  = explode(",", trim($_POST['mods']));

Now for the big question that is racking my brain and spent hours on and cannot get it to work…. I need for $files_to_zip to still be in an array and display the posted values of $mod_nums. So it would be like:

$files_to_zip = array( HAVE $_POSTED VALUES IN HERE );

I hope that makes sense. I need $files_to_zip to remain in array format, grab the file path to the zip files from the $mod_nums array, and display it all correctly so it would dynamically output:

$files_to_zip = array(’01_mod_1.0.2.zip’, ’02_mod_1.0.1.zip’);

so posted numbers will appear in an array format for the $files_to_zip variable. Make sense? In short I need an array to have dynamic values. Thanks 🙂

EDIT

Phew I figured it out myself from memory when I worked on something similar many years ago. This looks tough but it isn’t. I had to use a foreach and assign the variable into an array like so:

$blah = array();

foreach ($explode_mods as $value)
{
    $blah[] = $mod_nums[$value];
}

then I just assigned $files_to_zip to $blah:

$files_to_zip = $blah;

works perfectly 🙂 I just forgot how to dynamically assign values into an array.

Answer 1

// filenames array
$mod_nums = array('1' => $input_zip_path . '01_mod_1.0.2.zip',
                  '2' => $input_zip_path . '02_mod_1.0.1.zip',
);

// mod_num keys
$explode_mods  = explode(',', trim($_POST['mods']));

// array to hold filenames
$files_to_zip = array();

// loop over all the mod_num keys submitted via POST
foreach($explode_mods as $key){
    // save the filename to the corresponding array
    $files_to_zip[] = $mod_nums[$key];
}