Is it possible to loop array without using foreach? - php

Question

I have a html array structure..
I output this array with foreach loops. (inside get_output functions)
Is it possible to output results without using foreach?
$schema = array(
array(
'tag' => 'div',
'class' => 'lines',
array(
'tag' => 'div',
array(
'tag' => 'span',
'style' => 'margin:10px; padding:10px',
'key' => '$key-countryname',
),
'key' => '$value-country',
),
array(
'tag' => 'div',
array(
'tag' => 'span',
'style' => 'margin:10px; padding:10px',
'key' => '$key-countryname',
),
'key' => '$value-country',
),
)
);
My function is using foreach loops to output results
function get_output($schema, $t = -2){
$t++; $tag = ""; $atts = array(); $keys = array(); $code = array();
foreach($schema as $k => $v){
if(is_array($v)){
$keys[] = get_output($v, $t);
} else {
switch($k){
case "tag": $tag = $v; break;
case "key": $keys[] = $v; break;
case "type": break;
default: $atts[$k] = $v; break;
}
}
}
if(0 < $t){ $code[] = "\n".str_repeat("\t", $t); }
if($tag){
$code[] = "<$tag"; foreach($atts as $k=>$v){ $code[] = ' '.$k.'="'.$v.'"'; } $code[] = ">";
$code = array(implode('', $code));
}
foreach($keys as $k){ $code[] = $k; }
if($tag){
$code[] = "\n".str_repeat("\t", $t);
$code[] = '</'.$tag.'>';
}
//print_r($code);
return implode("", $code);
}

Answer 1

while and for are perfectly valid ways to loop array:
$a = array(1,2,3); // indexed
$b = array(
'a' => 1,
'b' => 2,
'c' => 3
); // associative
echo '$a indexed with "for": <br />';
for ($i = 0; $i < count($a); $i++) {
echo $a[$i] . '<br />';
}
echo '$a indexed with "while": <br />';
$i = 0; // reset counter
while ($i < count($a)) {
echo $a[$i] . '<br />';
$i++;
}
echo '$b assoc with "for": <br />';
for ($i = 0; $i < count($a); $i++) {
echo key($b) . ' => ' . current($b) . '<br />';
next($b); // step forward
}
echo '$b assoc with "while": <br />';
reset($b); // rewind array cursor to start
while ($value = current($b)) {
echo key($b) . ' => ' . $value . '<br />';
next($b); // step forward
}
Also as you already implemented in your second code snippet, multi-dim array can be looped with recursion (though compared to nested loops it consumes more memory)