Question

i have the following 3 variables:

        private $a_total;
        private $b_total;
        private $c_total;

now when the fields are filled out with some data for totals, names of those fields are “a”, “b”, and “c”. I want to store it dynamically to the variables above something like:

      $type = $_POST['totaltype']; //either a, b or c
      $to_save = "{$type}_total";
      $this->$to_save['total'] = some number;

if i try to

 print_r($this->$to_save); 

it gives empty array. If i try to:

 print_r($this->$to_save['total']); 

it gives correct number.

can anyone help?

Note: i want to use dynamically because these data will be inside a big loop so i don’t want to reuse $a_total, $b_total, $c_total since i will have more than a, b and c variables.

Answer 1

You can wrap the variable name in curly-brackets inside the class:

$this->{$type . "_total"} = 5;

The same works when accessing it like an array:

$this->{$type . "_total"}['total'] = 5;

You can also save the full-name of the variable in a string, such as your $to_save and access it the same way:

$to_string = $type . '_total';
$this->{$to_string}['total'] = 5;
print_r($this->{$to_string});