Question

Ok, trying to make a function that I can pass a variable to, that will search a static currently hardcoded multi dimensional array for its keys, and return the array matched to the key found (if found).

This is what I have thus far.

public function teamTypeMapping($teamType)
{
    //we send the keyword football, baseball, other, then we return the array associated with it.
    //eg: we send football to this function, it returns an array with nfl, college-football
    $mappings = array(
                "football" => array('nfl', 'college-football'),
                "baseball" => array('mlb', 'college-baseball'),
                "basketball" => array('nba', 'college-basketball'),
                "hockey" => array('nhl', 'college-hockey'),
                );
    foreach($mappings as $mapped => $item)
    {
        if(in_array($teamType, $item)){return $mapped;}
    }
    return false;
}

And I’d like to make a call to it, example:

teamTypeMapping("football");

Amd have it return the array associated with the key “football”, I have tried this a couple ways, and each time I come up false, maybe I am missing something so Im up for taking some advice at this point.

Answer 1

The reason it’s not working is that you are looping through the $mappings array, and trying to see if $teamType is in the $item.

There are two problems with your approach:

1. You are looking in the $item (this is the array(‘nfl’, ‘college-football’)) for ‘football’. This is incorrect.
2. You are using in_array() which checks if a ‘value’ is in the array, not the ‘key’ that you have used. You might want to take a look at the array_key_exists() function – I think this is what you meant to use.

My personal preference is to use isset() instead of array_key_exists(). Slightly different syntax, but both do the same job.

See below for a revised solution:

public function teamTypeMapping($teamType)
{
    //we send the keyword football, baseball, other, then we return the array associated with it.
    //eg: we send football to this function, it returns an array with nfl, college-football
    $mappings = array(
                "football" => array('nfl', 'college-football'),
                "baseball" => array('mlb', 'college-baseball'),
                "basketball" => array('nba', 'college-basketball'),
                "hockey" => array('nhl', 'college-hockey'),
                );
    if (isset($mappings[$teamType])) 
    {
        return $mappings[$teamType];
    }
    return false;
}