Question

I’m not even sure how to begin wording this question, but basically, I have an array, that looks like this:

Array
(
    [0] => /
    [1] => /404/
    [2] => /abstracts/
    [3] => /abstracts/edit/
    [4] => /abstracts/review/
    [5] => /abstracts/view/
    [6] => /admin/
    [7] => /admin/ads/
    [8] => /admin/ads/clickcounter/
    [9] => /admin/ads/delete/
    [10] => /admin/ads/edit/
    [11] => /admin/ads/list/
    [12] => /admin/ads/new/
    [13] => /admin/ads/sponsordelete/
    [14] => /admin/ads/sponsoredit/
    [15] => /admin/ads/sponsornew/
    [16] => /admin/ads/stats/
    [17] => /admin/boilerplates/
    [18] => /admin/boilerplates/deleteboiler/
    [19] => /admin/boilerplates/editboiler/
    [20] => /admin/boilerplates/newboilerplate/
    [21] => /admin/calendar/event/add/
    [22] => /admin/calendar/event/copy/
)

And I need to ‘reduce’ / ‘process’ it into an array that looks like this:

Array
(
    [''] => Array()
    ['404'] => Array()
    ['abstracts'] => Array
                     (
                          [''] => Array()
                          ['edit'] => Array()
                          ['review'] => Array()
                          ['view'] => Array()
                     )
    ['admin'] => Array
                     (
                          ['ads'] => Array
                                     (
                                         [''] => Array()
                                         ['clickcounter'] => Array()
                                         ['delete'] =>Array()
                                         ['edit'] => Array()
                                     )
                     )
    .....
    .....   
)

That, if manually initialized would look something like this:

$urlTree = array( ''         => array(),
                  '404'      => array(),
                  'abstracts'=> array( ''      => array(),
                                       'edit'  => array(),
                                       'review'=> array(),
                                       'view'  => array() ),
                  'admin'    => array( 'ads'=> array( ''            => array(),
                                                      'clickcounter'=> array(),
                                                      'delete'      => array(),
                                                      'edit'        => array() ) )
);

I usually stray away from asking straight up for a chunk of code on SO, but does anyone perhaps have any advice / code that can traverse my array and convert it to a hierarchy?

EDIT: Here is the bit I have right now, which, I know is pitifully small, I’m just blanking out today it seems.

  function loadUrlData()
  {
    // hold the raw data, /blah/blah/
    $urlData = array();

    $res = sql::query( "SELECT DISTINCT(`url`) FROM `pages` ORDER BY `url` ASC" );
    while( $row = sql::getarray( $res ) )
    {
      $urlData[] = explode( '/', substr( $row['url'], 1, -1 ) );
    }

    // populated, eventually, with the parent > child data
    $treeData = array();

    // a url
    foreach( $urlData as $k=> $v )
    {
      // the url pieces
      foreach( $v as $k2=> $v2 )
      {

      }
    }

    // $treeData eventually
    return $urlData;
  }

Answer 1

Looks rather easy. You want to loop through all lines (foreach), split them into parts (explode), loop through them (foreach) and categorize them.

Since you don’t like asking for a chunk of code, I won’t provide any.

Update
A very nice way to solve this is to reference the $urlTree (use &), loop through every part of the URL and keep updating a variable like $currentPosition to the current part in the URL tree. Because you use &, you can simply edit the array directly while still using a simple variable.

Update 2
This might work:

// a url
foreach( $urlData as $k=> $v )
{
  $currentSection = &$treeData;
  // the url pieces
  foreach( $v as $k2=> $v2 )
  {
    if (!isset($currentSection[$v2])) {
      $currentSection[$v2] = array();
    }

    $currentSection = &$currentSection[$v2];
  }
}