Create multiple span based on array - php

Question

I have an array that looks like this:
$elm = 'a,b,c';
I need the values of the array so I use explode to get to them:
$q = explode(",",$elm);
I then would like to echo every single item into a span, so I make an array:
$arr = array();
foreach($html->find($q[0]) as $a) {
$arr[] = $a->outertext;
}
$arr2 = array();
foreach($html->find($q[1]) as $b) {
$arr2[] = $b->outertext;
}
$arr3 = array();
foreach($html->find($q[2]) as $c) {
$arr3[] = $c->outertext;
}
And then finally I output like this:
echo "<ul>";
for($i=0; $i<sizeof($arr + $arr2 + $arr3); $i++)
{
echo "<li>";
echo "<span>".$arr[$i]."</span>";
echo "<span>".$arr2[$i]."</span>";
echo "<span>".$arr3[$i]."</span>";
echo "</li>";
}
echo "</ul>";
The problem is that I have to write all the items ($q[0] + $q[1] + $q[2]) and the corresponding span (<span>".$arr[$i]."</span>) This is a problem because in reality I don't know what and how long the first array ($elm) is. Therefore I don't want to 'physically' write down all the span elements but rather create them on the fly depending on the array $elm. I tried many things but I can't figure it out.

Answer 1

The basic issue here is that you don't know how many elements $elm will contain. foreach is the best choice here, as it doesn't require the length of the array to loop through it.
Use a nested foreach loop to store all the outertexts in an array:
foreach (explode(",", $elm) as $elem) {
foreach ($html->find($elem) as $a) {
$arr[$elem][] = $a->outertext;
}
}
$arr[$elem][] is the important bit here. On each iteration of the outer loop, the value of $elem will be a, b and c. On each iteration of the inner loop, it will create a new index in the array: $arr['a'], $arr['b'] and $arr['c'] and add the outertext values to the respective index.
Once you've stored all the required values in the array, it's only a matter of looping through it. Since we have a multi-dimensional array here, you will need to use a nested loop again:
echo "<ul>";
foreach ($arr as $sub) {
echo "<li>";
foreach ($sub as $span) {
echo "<span>".$span."</span>";
}
echo "</li>";
}
echo "</ul>";