Display any multi-dimensional array as a html table - php

Question

I use this function to display any kind of multi-dimensional array as a human readeable html table. For exemple, this array :
$arr = array
(
'root' => array(
'main' => array (
'members' => array(
array ('identifier' => '36', 'fullname' => 'jonathan carter'),
array ('identifier' => '42', 'fullname' => 'hello world')
)
)
)
);
becomes a table (with echo array2table($arr, true)) :
My problem, as you can see, is that there are too many table headers when multiple arrays contains only one sub array. This is what I would like to have :
You probably say: "What did you tried ?"
Well, before displaying the table header, I made and call a recursive function which returns an array of keys if there nested tables :
function nextTableHeaders($array)
{
// requires an array with only 1 child
if (!is_array($array) || count($array) !== 1)
return array();
$key = key($array);
return array_merge(array($key), nextTableHeaders($array[$key]));
}
In that case, it returns :
array('root', 'main', 'members');
Then I join the values with ' > ' and it becomes my new table headers. But I need then to go deeper into the arrays (because I don't wan't to display "main > members", and "members"). But I didn't succeed.
I would appreciate any help.

Answer 1

My suggestion is to keep the table printing as is, and to create a new function that will take the array and then convert it into the sort of array which when printed will display what you wish to be displayed.
function compressArray($array) {
// Non-arrays and multiple-key arrays are unaffected
if (!is_array($array) or count($array) !== 1)
return $array;
// This is a recursive algorithm
$child = compressArray(current($array));
// Compression unnecessary when child is non-array or a multiple-key array
if (!is_array($child) or count($child) !== 1)
return $array;
// Both parent and child are single key arrays so compress
$new_key = key($array) . " > " . key($child);
return array($new_key => current($child));
}
This will convert
$arr = array
(
'root' => array(
'main' => array (
'members' => array(
array ('identifier' => '36', 'fullname' => 'jonathan carter'),
array ('identifier' => '42', 'fullname' => 'hello world')
)
)
)
);
into
$arr = array
(
'root > main > members' => array(
array ('identifier' => '36', 'fullname' => 'jonathan carter'),
array ('identifier' => '42', 'fullname' => 'hello world')
)
);