Question

I have the following function which works fine.

function ($objects, $items = array())
{
  $result = array();
  foreach ($objects as $object) {
    $result[$object->id] = $object->first_name . ' ' . $object->last_name; 
  }
  return $result;
}

However, I would like to pass in an array to $items, and have that exploded, so that I dont have to specify first_name and last_name manually.

If $item was only a single value (and not an array), then it would be simple:

$result[$object->id] = $object->$item; 

But I have no idea how to make this work if $items contains multiple values and I want to join them with a space. Something like, the following, but I need to get the $object in there

$items = array('first_name', 'last_name');
$result[$object->id] = implode(' ', $items);

Answer 1

Do I get you right that you`d like to use the strings in $item as property-names of $object?

function ($objects, $items = array())
{
  $result = array();
  foreach ($objects as $object) {
    $valuesToAssign = array();
    foreach ($items as $property) {
        $valuesToAssign[] = $object->$property;
    }
    $result[$object->id] = implode(' ', $valuesToAssign);
  }
  return $result;
}

I have no idea to avoid the second foreach, but that gives you the desired result.