Question

To start off, here is the JSON response that I’ve been working on:

{  "status": "ok",
 "permalinks": [
"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/2012\/06\/",
"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/2012\/04\/",
"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/2012\/03\/",
"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/2011\/10\/"
 ],
 "tree": {
"2012": {
  "06": "221",
  "04": "2",
  "03": "3"
},
"2011": {
  "10": "3"
}
}
}

PHP is being used to format it as an HTML UL inside a DIV:

function DisplayResponse(){
$baseref = 'http://localhost/' ;
$url = $baseref . 'api/get_date_index';
$r = file_get_contents( $url ) ;
if( $r !== false ){
    $r = json_decode($r,true);
    $t = $r['tree'] ;
    echo '<div class="sidebar">' ;
    echo '<h3>Response</h3>' ;
    echo '<ul class="sidebar-list">' ;
    for ( $y = 0 ; $y <= 2 ; $y++ ){
        if ( $y == 0 ){
            for ( $m = 12 ; $m >= 0 ; $m-- ) {
                $d = mktime ( 0, 0, 0, $m, 1, Date("Y") ) ;
                $du = Date("Y", $d ) ;
                $dm = Date("M", $d ) ;
                if ( $m < 11 ){
                    $mm = sprintf("%02d",$m) ;
                    if ( $t[$du][$mm] != NULL ){

                        echo '<li><a href="' . $baseref . 'blog/' . $du . '/' . $mm
                            . '/">' . $dm . ',&nbsp;' . $du . '</a></li>' ;
                    }
                } else {
                    if ( $t[$du][$m] != NULL ){

                        echo '<li><a href="' . $baseref . 'blog/' . $du . '/' . $mm
                            . '/">' . $dm . ',&nbsp;' . $du . '</a></li>' ;
                    }
                }
            }
        } else {
            for ( $m = 12 ; $m >= 0 ; $m-- ) {
                $d = mktime ( 0, 0, 0, $m, 1, ( Date("Y") - $y) ) ;
                $du = Date("Y", $d );
                $dm = Date("M", $d ) ;
                if ( $m < 11 ){
                    $mm = sprintf("%02d",$m) ;
                    if ( $t[$du][$mm] != NULL ){

                        echo '<li><a href="' . $baseref . 'blog/' . $du . '/' . $mm
                            . '/">' . $dm . ',&nbsp;' . $du . '</a></li>' ;
                    }
                } else {
                    if ( $t[$du][$m] != NULL ){

                        echo '<li><a href="' . $baseref . 'blog/' . $du . '/' . $mm
                            . '/">' . $dm . ',&nbsp;' . $du . '</a></li>' ;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    echo '</ul></div><div class="sidebar-bottom"></div>' ;

}

}

The output is the desired result of having month and year line item wonderfully displayed in descending on the section of a page, but how do I clean up this code so that is beautifully displayed in the source?

Answer 1

Some tips:

• Divide into three parts:

  1. Fetch the array from the website
  2. Extract the interesting part out of it

  3. Do the display with that part.

     $response = get_response();
     $tree = get_tree($response);
     output_tree($tree);
     

• Inside your current display code you have got a lot of code-duplication. Just compact any duplicate code, like suggested by putting it into a function. When you do so, you might also realize that most of the code isn’t even needed.

• You can iterate over an array, even inside one:

  echo "<ul>\n";
  foreach ($tree as $year => $months) {
      foreach ($months as $month => $count) {
          echo "  <li>", $month, ",&nbsp;", $year, "</li>\n";
      }
  }
  echo "<ul>\n";
  

  This small example displays the whole list, I just have left creating the links out which should be okay for demonstration purposes.

If you keep things small and apart, you will see that it’s easier to create something.