How can I build an object/array? - php

Question

I am rather new to PHP so I don't know how to work with these datasets. I make a MySQL select and get back an object like this:
{
"membername": "NAME",
"bookingdate": "2020-02-03",
"categoryid": 1,
"dailyworkhourssum": "7.70"
},
{
"membername": "NAME",
"bookingdate": "2020-02-03",
"categoryid": 3,
"dailyworkhourssum": "1.2"
},
{
"membername": "NAME",
"bookingdate": "2020-02-05",
"categoryid": 3,
"dailyworkhourssum": "7.70"
},
I want to iterate through this and in the end it should look like this:
{
"membername": "NAME",
"bookingdate": "2020-02-03",
"categoryid1": true,
"categorid3": true,
"dailyworkhourssum1": "7.70",
"dailyworkhourssum3": "1.2"
},
{
"membername": "NAME",
"bookingdate": "2020-02-05",
"categoryid": 3,
"dailyworkhourssum": "7.70"
},
What this does is that it merges tow fields together (if they have the same bookingdate )into one so that I can display it in a table without reoccurring dates.
My problem:
I don't know what this type of data is called.
I don't know how to create something like this.
I can add fields to this type of data with $data->newField = example so I think that this is an object.

Answer 1

In JS it's called an object, but in PHP you will use an associative array instead.
In your case, I think, you have an array of associative arrays. It looks like this:
$books = [
[
"membername" => "NAME",
"bookingdate" => "2020-02-03",
"categoryid" => 1,
"dailyworkhourssum" => "7.70"
],
[
"membername" => "NAME",
"bookingdate" => "2020-02-03",
"categoryid" => 3,
"dailyworkhourssum" => "1.2"
],
[
"membername" => "NAME",
"bookingdate" => "2020-02-05",
"categoryid" => 3,
"dailyworkhourssum" => "7.70"
]
];
If you wanna merge an arrays with the same "bookingdate" then I recommend you to loop through this array and add its elements to another associative array with bookingdates as keys, and check, in case if there is such key already, then merge the arrays, like this:
$merged = [];
foreach ($books as $book) {
$date = $book['bookingdate'];
if (isset($merged[$date])) {
$merged[$date] = $merged[$date] + $book;
} else {
$merged[$date] = $book;
}
}
I think that it is not a valid code (no time, sorry), but I hope, you cautch the idea.
If you want a 'list' instead of an associative array, than you can do this:
$mergedList = array_values($merged);
Thus you will rid of string keys.

Answer 2

If I understood correctly, you obtain a table with 4 columns an a variable number of rows and you want to transform it to a table with a variable number of columns. For that, using a data structure where every item is different from the previous one can make everything harder than it needs. I'd suggest you use a fixed structure:
// I'm assuming you have a PHP array as starting point
$input = [
[
'membername' => 'NAME',
'bookingdate' => '2020-02-03',
'categoryid' => 1,
'dailyworkhourssum' => '7.70',
],
[
'membername' => 'NAME',
'bookingdate' => '2020-02-03',
'categoryid' => 3,
'dailyworkhourssum' => '1.2',
],
[
'membername' => 'NAME',
'bookingdate' => '2020-02-05',
'categoryid' => 3,
'dailyworkhourssum' => '7.70',
],
];
$output = [];
foreach ($input as $data) {
// We'll group by booking date
if (!isset($output[$data['bookingdate']])) {
$output[$data['bookingdate']] = [
'membername' => $data['membername'],
'bookingdate' => $data['bookingdate'],
'categoryid' => $data['categoryid'],
'dailyworkhourssum' => [],
];
}
// A single date may have several daily work hours
$output[$data['bookingdate']]['dailyworkhourssum'][] = $data['dailyworkhourssum'];
}
// We discard array keys (we only needed them to group)
echo json_encode(array_values($output));
[{
"membername": "NAME",
"bookingdate": "2020-02-03",
"categoryid": 1,
"dailyworkhourssum": ["7.70", "1.2"]
}, {
"membername": "NAME",
"bookingdate": "2020-02-05",
"categoryid": 3,
"dailyworkhourssum": ["7.70"]
}]
Wherever you consume this JSON you just need to loop the dailyworkhourssum array. You may also want to loop the entire structure before printing the table and keep a counter in order to determine the maximum number of columns so you can draw empty cells where needed (tables are rectangular).