print out index of array, as well as value of each index - php

Question

I have the array $student[]
<?php
$student['id'] = "10402";
$student['hnumber'] = "H030502";
$student['name'] = "Larry Wayne";
print_r($student);
?>
It prints out:
Array ( [id] => 10402 [hnumber] => H030502 [name] => Larry Wayne )
What I want to accomplish is storing values into an array, that will then be inserted into a database table.
So the insert statement would be:
$q = "insert into table (id, hnumber, name) VALUES ('10401', 'H030502', 'Larry Wayne')";
I want to use an array to store all the values into it, labeling each value by their table field name, because it will be about 25 fields I will be inserting data into.
If there is a better way of accomplishing that, I am all ears.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Assuming you are building an array of students from another source, how about something like this?
// data from an external source
$students = array(
// student 1
array(
123,
'h123',
'John Smith',
),
// student 2
array(
456,
'h456',
'Jane Smith',
),
// ... and so on
);
$values = array();
foreach ( $students as $student )
{
// #todo, make sure to sanitize values!!!
$values[] = sprintf('(%s)', implode(', ', $student));
}
// build query
$query = 'INSERT INTO `table` (`id`, `hnumber`, `name`) VALUES '.implode(', ', $values);
Please note, above code is "pseudo" or an idea if you want. Make sure to sanitize the values :)
EDIT: One more thing. Above code is good if you want a simple fix, preferably for some sort of simple data import. Better way is to create a class Student handling all this logic.

Answer 2

I wanted to simply comment on David's example as it's pretty much the same thing I was going to suggest, but I can't add code to comments, unfortunately. One thing David forgot from your original question was that you wanted to use the table fields as part of your array - in this example, as the key fields. In the foreach, you can split the array in to key/value pairs, and then use them later on in your code itself.
<?php
$student['id'] = "10402";
$student['hnumber'] = "H030502";
$student['name'] = "Larry Wayne";
$queryFields = array();
$queryValues = array();
$queryString = '';
foreach($student as $key => $value){
$queryFields[] = '`'.$key.'`';
$queryValues[] = $value;
}
$queryString = 'INSERT INTO `table` ('.implode(',', $queryFields).') VALUES ('.implode(',', $queryValues).')';
//run_query($queryString)
?>
Since I'm not 100% familiar with CodeIgniter, it's very possible that there might be a way to map arrays and/or objects to some sort of ActiveRecord implementation. However, since you're just looking for a way to generate a query string itself, this would do the trick.