How to generate breadcrumbs using recursion on database row data? - php

Question

I have to make a breadcrumb menu which comes database.
So made this function
function file_list($path) {
$result = array();
$q = "SELECT staticTitle,staticId,parentId FROM tbl_static_pages WHERE staticId = $path";
$run = mysql_query($q);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($run)) {
if($row['parentId'] > 1) {
echo $row['staticTitle'];
$result = file_list($row['parentId']);
return $result; // INSERTED
}else {
return $result;
}
}
I have a database structure like this:
id | parentId | title
3 | 1 | keyword
28 | 3 | xxx
31 | 28 | business
I want to output like this business -> xxx -> keyword
I want to run this function until $row['parentId'] = 1.When I echo the title, I got correct result.When I try it to store it in array, I always get single value.
How can I return an array in recursive array?

Answer 1

I REALLY don't like the idea of recursive calls on the database. If this is a "breadcrumbs" database table, how big could it possibly be? ...I mean size is probably not a concern.
I would like to suggest that you pull the full table out (3 columns, all rows) and assign the resultset to a php variable. This means you only ever make one trip to the database -- and that's a good thing.
Code: (Demo)
function breadcrumber($array,$id){
static $result=[]; // declare the storage variable without losing elements during recursion
if(isset($array[$id])){ // if target exists
$result[]=$array[$id]['title']; // store title text
$parent=$array[$id]['parentId']; // assign new target
unset($array[$id]); // remove possibility of an infinite loop
breadcrumber($array,$parent); // recurse
}
return $result;
}
$resultset=[
['id'=>3,'parentId'=>1,'title'=>'keyword'],
['id'=>28,'parentId'=>3,'title'=>'xxx'],
['id'=>31,'parentId'=>28,'title'=>'business']
];
echo implode(' -> ',breadcrumber(array_column($resultset,NULL,'id'),31));
// ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^-assign associative keys for easy lookup
Output:
business -> xxx -> keyword
...and here is another demo using your second set of data

Answer 2

Try this:
function file_list($path)
{
$result = array();
$q = "SELECT staticTitle,staticId,parentId FROM tbl_static_pages WHERE staticId = $path";
$run = mysql_query($q);
$results = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($run))
{
if ($row['parentId'] > 1)
{
echo $row['staticTitle'];
$results = array_merge($results, file_list($row['parentId']));
}
else
{
$results[] = $result;
}
}
return $results;
}
Few things that are not clear from your question:
Breadcrumbs are usually not recursive, so I suppose you do NOT want to actually return a recursive array (array where every element is again array). If you want, follow comment by #midhunjose
Do you expect the query to ever return multiple records?
Swap the order of array_merge arguments, if you want the parent before child in resulting array.

Answer 3

Try this:
$result[] = file_list($row['parentId']);
instand of
$result = file_list($row['parentId']);