php putting an array from _construct into function - php

Question

II'm using an API and was wondering why I am having trouble getting an array to cross into a function. The following works fine but how can I make it work for an array.
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct(); // Init parent constructor
$this->dbConnect();
$this->test();
}
public function test()
{
$this->category = "bracelets";
}
private function piece()
{
// Pass an array into this function here and then use depending on array key
$cat = $this->category;
}
So instead of a constant $this->category="bracelets. I would like this to be an array. e.g.
public function test()
{
$array = [
"foo" => "bar",
"bar" => "foo",
];
$this->category = $array;
}
Ok, this has been resolved. It was due to a minor error elsewhere. For a moment I believed there was an issue with arrays in a restful API.
I hope this is useful to any others who wish to pass one function results to another in an api class.

Answer 1

Looking at you code, it seems you want the category property to be an array of all categories, read from the database..?
I did spot some bugs in your code:
You have variable name mixups on $cat_array vs. $cat_arr
You select cat column from DB but try read category
I have made slight changes in your test() method to fix it:
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct(); // Init parent constructor
$this->dbConnect();
$this->test();
}
// Array with name of all categories, indexed by category id
private $category;
public function test()
{
$query = "SELECT c.id, c.cat FROM category c order by c.id asc";
$cat = $this->mysqli->query($query)
or die ($this->mysqli->error . __LINE__);
if ($cat->num_rows > 0) {
$cat_array = array();
while ($crow = $cat->fetch_assoc()) {
$id = $crow['id'];
$cat_array[$id] = $crow['cat'];
//$cat_array[$crow['id']]=$crow['category'];
}
$this->category = $cat_array;
//$this->response($this->json($result), 200); // send details
}
}
private function piece()
{
// Pass an array into this function here and then use depending on array key
$cat = $this->category;
// Check if it is working as expected
print_r($cat);
}