Massage Smarty array in PHP andsend it back to Smarty . . .? - php

Question

How would you a) fix a Smarty array in PHP and b) stick the result back into the Smarty array variable?
Have you ever worked on a problem, and you thought you were SO close to resolving it, but the target keeps on slipping farther and farther away? I spent half a day on this, looking up documentation, searching for examples...but I must be missing something very basic.
Premise: I have a Smarty array with duplicate entries (and for now I cannot change the way this gets created, because the Smarty code is encoded in a template). This causes problems, because now I get multiple entries for the same product in the shopping cart. RIGHT NOW, I honestly cannot change the logic of how this was put together.
Here's what I got:
Smarty:
{$products}
In my scenario, {$products} contains four entries like so:
array(1) { [0]=> array(12) { ["pid"]=> string(2) "13" ["domain"]=> NULL
["billingcycle"]=> string(4) "free" ["configoptions"]=> string(0) ""
["customfields"]=> array(0) { } ["addons"]=> array(0) { } ["server"]=> string(0) ""
["productinfo"]=> array(9) { ["pid"]=> string(2) "13" ["gid"]=> string(1) "2"
["type"]=> string(5) "other" ["groupname"]=> string(13) "Beta Products" ["name"]=>
string(44) "BetterStuff "Free Until 2014" Beta" ["description"]=> string(21)
"BetterStuff installer" ["freedomain"]=> string(0) "" ["freedomainpaymentterms"]=>
array(1) { [0]=> string(0) "" } ["freedomaintlds"]=> array(1) {[0]=> string(0) ""}}
["allowqty"]=> string(1) "0" ["qty"]=> int(1) ["pricing"]=> array(4) { ["baseprice"]=>
string(9) "$0.00 USD" ["setup"]=> string(9) "$0.00 USD" ["recurring"]=> array(0){}
["totaltoday"]=> string(9) "$0.00 USD" } ["pricingtext"]=> string(5) "FREE!" } }
In PHP, I can easily use array-unique, to get rid of the 3 exact copies within this array, and be left with just one (as the one I just showed above).
{php}
$var = $this->get_template_vars('products');
$var = array_unique($var);
$smarty = new Smarty();
$smarty->assign('newproducts', $var = array_unique($var));
var_dump($var);
{/php}
This works perfectly, in PHP, and the var_dump($var) contains one array item (just like the one I showed above). In PHP, when I check $var with is_array, the result is true.
Back in Smarty, however, {$newproducts} is NULL.
When I try to re-assign the original Smarty array {$products}, I get
an error message about not being allowed to add string values to the
array.
When I try to print out {$newproducts|#count}, I get 0. That's
slight;y confusing to me, because I believe that Smart arrays start
at 1, whereas PHP arrays are zero-based.
So although PHP considers the variable I assign to be the value for
the new variable an array, it doesn't come into Smarty as an array.
What am I doing wrong here? Do I need to explode or split my PHP array somehow, so that I can turn it into a Smarty variable?
And how can I "reset" the original {$products} array in Smarty to the new unique array value?
Anyone?

Answer 1

Since there is no real answer and I was stuck with the same problem, that is, not being able to call array_unique from the php side since I had no access to the code generating it.
Here is the code that worked for me in Smarty:
{foreach from=$items item=item}
{if !in_array($item, $array)}
<li>{$item}</li>
{append var='array' value=$item}
{/if}
{/foreach}
It makes use of the smarty append command, which will add items to an array. Furthermore I made use of in_array (scroll down to the bullet regarding php_functions) which is, among some other php functions available in Smarty.
I hope this might help someone else out!

Answer 2

{php}
// read data from CURRENT INSTANCE
$var = $this->get_template_vars('products');
$var = array_unique($var);
// create NEW INSTANCE
$smarty = new Smarty();
// assign to NEW INSTANCE
$smarty->assign('newproducts', $var = array_unique($var));
var_dump($var);
{/php}
so, you're creating a new smarty instance and assigning data to it. Is there a reason you believe said data would be available in the current instance?
try this:
{php}
// read data from CURRENT INSTANCE
$var = $this->get_template_vars('products');
$var = array_unique($var);
// assign to CURRENT INSTANCE
$this->assign('newproducts', $var = array_unique($var));
{/php}
And {php} is deprecated. You might want to look into Extending Smarty With Plugins