PHP how to loop through an array and grab specific parts - php

Question

Ok so im trying to grab a single part of an array, the array is the return for some stats there can be up to 8 players in the server, the data i get is like this
Array (
[0] => 1
[1] => Player1
[2] =>
[3] => 1
[4] => 0
[5] => 0
[6] => 0
[7] => 0
[8] => 1
[9] => Player2
[10] =>
[11] => 1
[12] => 0
[13] => 0
[14] => 0
[15] => 0
)
so that is the return for 2 players, as i said it can be up to 8, anyway i am trying to just grab the player names and im not sure how to go about it ( Player1 , Player2 ) is the only data i need, any help is appreciated, it always returns 8 pieces of data per player never more never less if that makes it easier
(sorry for bad english)

Answer 1

If you have control over the return type, I would restructure the array being returned either into an Object or an array of arrays where each sub array contains all of the information for one player.
I you don't have control over the return type and the Player's name is always in the second position within the return array you can use a while loop to iterate over the array. Use a counter starting at 1 and then increment the counter by 8 each time through the loop. For example:
$i= 1;
while ($i < count($return_var)) {
$name = $return_var[$i];
// do something w/ name
$i += 8;
}

Answer 2

You want to get all items that are not '' (assuming empty string), 0 or 1 (assuming integers here):
$playerNames = array_diff($array, array('', 0, 1));
If you more specifically know what the format of the array actually is, you can also create some little "parser":
$playerSize = 8;
$playerFields = array('_1', 'name', '_3', '_4', '_5', '_6', '_7', '_8');
$players = array_chunk($array, $playerSize);
foreach($players as &$player)
{
$player = (object) array_combine($playerFields, $player);
}
unset($player);
This does parse $array into another array $players that contains one object per each player. Each object has the name property now:
printf("%d Player(s):\n", count($players));
foreach($players as $i => $player)
{
printf("#%d: %s\n", $player->name);
}

Answer 3

if the array you pasted is called $array and the values of the places without players are always numeric (like your example), this code will work:
$players = array();
foreach($array as $player){
if(!empty($player) && !is_numeric($player){
$players[]=$player;
}
}
var_dump($players);