Question

I have an Array of product types in PHP, it looks pretty much like this:

$types = [
    0 => "cars",
    1 => "motorbikes",
    2 => "boats",
    3 => "airplanes"
];

So that when then user wants to get or save it, I can use the ID of the category to insert or get it from the database, like this:

select * from items where type = 0;

now, My doubt is the following: if I am using integer index keys, would it not be the same to use the following?

$types = ["cars", "motorbikes", "etc."];

Since PHP will give an integer auto-ordering.

Which one would you consider to be best practice in this case? The advantage of the first example seems to only be the fact that I can assign different keys, like for private categories or such, but I don’t know really.

It is also important to consider that the values will need to be translated so, should I consider even just using IDs? like

$types = ["t1", "t2", "etc."];

and then insert the translation somewhere else?

Answer 1

There are 2 possible options.

1. Your current option 1 with manually set indexes.
2. A way better one – a table in the DB, holding these categories, which allow editing categories without losing the association between keys and names.

Your current option 2 is not an option at all – it will break the order the same moment you insert or delete a category

Here you set the index:

    $types = [
        3 => "airplanes"
  index ^         ^ value

So, if you delete cars from the list, the index remain associated with it’s value:

$types = [
    1 => "motorbikes",
    2 => "boats",
    3 => "airplanes"
];

While if you don’t set indexes manually

$types = ["motorbikes", "boats", "airplanes"];

airplanes will lose it’s association, and become boats. It’s not ht magic we expect from the web application