Do I need a nested foreach loop to do this? Help...

[fjm]

Hello everyone and happy Sunday. :)

I have a problem that I *think* I may know the solution to but have no idea how to write the code for it. I am working on a templating system wher I have created a template html file. I am using str_replace to replace the fields that I want changed. I'm not sure that I am doing this correctly either. A code sample follows.

I have a script that pulls a single customer from the database. The data that is pulled is the name of the company and other details about that company such as phone numbers, etc. Since a customer has many different phone numbers, I am getting the customer name repeated as many times as are phone numbers. This is exactly what the db should be doing but I need to somehow use php to echo the company name once and then loop all of the phone numbers, and addresses that are distinct to that customer.

        foreach($result as $content)
        {
            $out = str_replace("{LOCATION_NAME}", "$content[location_name]", "$tpl");
            $out .= str_replace("{MANAGER}", "$content[manager]", "$tpl");
 
            $out .= str_replace("{EMPLOYEE}", "$content[employee]", "$tpl");
 
echo $out;
        }

Of course with this foreach loop, I am getting six different pages because of my query. Should I be using two seperate queries? One to get the name of the location and then another for the multiple rows of data? I am almost sure that there is a way to maybe nest a foreach loop to get this.

Also, someone please tell me if I am doing this correctly. I created this html file and I am using fopen() to read the contents. I need to make about 7 or 8 replacements throughout that document. Is my str_replace code correct to do this? Am I on the right track here?

Would someone please help me out with this.. I really appriciate it

Frank

[fjm]

I have taken a break from this for a while and think I may have thought of the answer. I am thinking:

[PHP]
foreach($a as $b){
echo $b['something'];
foreach($b as $c){
echo $c['something'];
}
}
[/PHP]

Would this work? Am I on the right track?

[dlite922]

You're going about the templating the wrong way. This takes a lot of resources due to string manipulation and is absolutely not necessary.

Use Smarty templating system or another. if not, your html file should contain <?php echo $companyName ?> in it.

This way, all you have to is make sure that $companyName is a variable that's declared and initialized before you include() your html file.

for example here's an example PHP file:

[PHP]

<?php

$companyName = "test";

include("page.p hp");
exit();
?>
[/PHP]

then your page.php would include something like this:

 
include("header.ext"); 
 
<div id="company"><?php echo $companyName ?></div>
 
include("footer.ext");
 
 

Hope that makes sense,



Dan

[fjm]

Hi Dan. Thanks for the help and the direction. I used Smarty a few years back and I really didn't care for it that much. I would prefer to stay away from it where possible.

I thought about your second option of simply echoing the values in the html and I will definately go that route. That still leaves me with the same problem looping over my result set.

I need to compile one report per customer. The result set may have 5 or 10 or 20 different things associated with that customer. If I loop over the set I will get 5 or 10 or 20 reports.I only need a single report and was why I thouhgt that a nested foreach would be the ticket here.

Can you please advise? Or maybe I am not following what you were trying to say.

Thanks,

Frank

[pbmods]

Heya, Frank.

Assuming you have a string that looks something like this:

<tr>
  <td>{LOCATION_NAME}</td>
  <td>{MANAGER}</td>
  <td>{EMPLOYEE}</td>
</tr>
 

We'll call that $template.

You'll end up doing something like this:

$rendered = '';
 
foreach( $result as $content )
{
  $rendered .=
    str_replace
    (
        array
        (
            '{LOCATION_NAME}'
          , '{MANAGER}'
          , '{EMPLOYEE}'
        )
      , array
        (
            $content['location_name']
          , $content['manager']
          , $content['employee']
        )
      , $template
    );
}
 

This way, you render each row in the table (in this case) once for each record and then append the rendered content onto the output string.

[fjm]

Pbmods, thanks.... I am going to try that now. I will be back soo to let you know how that worked out. Thanks soo much!

Frank

[fjm]

Heya again Pbmods. :)

Thanks again for the help. The code you gave works and on the surface, appears to do exactly what mine was doing. It IS working, however, I still have the issue of creating 20+ reports when I only need one.

Here is the code I am currently working with:
[PHP]
<?php
require_once("d b.php");
$db = new Database('test' );

$filename = "report.tpl ";
$handle = fopen($filename , "r");
$template = fread($handle, filesize($filen ame));
fclose($handle) ;

$rendered = '';

$result = $db->Query("SELEC T location_name, addr1, city, name, email......");

foreach($result as $content)
{
$rendered .= str_replace(arr ay('{LOCATION_N AME}', '{NAME}'), array($content['location_name'], $content['name']), $template);
echo $rendered;
}
?>
[/PHP]

The foreach loops every customer with as many email addresses or phone numbers it has (whichever is more). What I need is this:

 report1
Customer1
address1
phone1
phone2
phone3
phone4 ...
 
 report2
Customer2
address1
phone1 (maybe this customer only has 1 phone.. it should stop here and go to report 3)
 

What I am getting is:
customer1
phone1
customer1
phone2
customer1
phone3
customer1
phone4 ...

Sorry Pbmods, I hope I am making sense here. The loop is generating massive amounts of reports instead of just a single report.

In other words, I get a new template generated for each and every phone number or employee name or whatever. I just need it all to be contained within 1 loop. It would seem to me that if I had a loop to get the customer name, address, city, state, zip and then had a second loop to get the items that customer had such as all phones, all employees, etc and compile that data with the first outer loop.

Should I be using a while loop outside and a foreach inside?

[Atli]

Hi.

You will simply have to format the data *before* you print them, or put them into your template.

Consider this:

$data = array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
  $data[$row['name']] = $row['number'];
}
foreach($data as $_name) {
  $numbers = "";
  foreach($_name as $_number) {
    $numbers .= "<tr><td>$_number</td></tr>";
  }
  echo "<table><tr><th>$_name</th></tr>$numbers</table>";
}
 

Which would give you a table for each name, containing the numbers for that name alone.

[fjm]

I'm sorry Atli, I wish I could say it worked. :(

[pbmods]

Ah, ok.

The way I like to do it is to keep track of the primary key with a temporary variable:

$lastID = null;
 
foreach( $result as $content )
{
  if( $content['CustomerID'] != $lastID )
  {
    $lastID = $content['CustomerID'];
    $rendered .= "<tr><th>{$content['CustomerID']}</th></tr>";
  }
 
  $rendered .= str_replace( ... );
}
 

Every time you hit a new customer ID, it will add a header row.

The only gotcha here is that you have to sort your results by CustomerID first.