How to split this up with PHP

Question

For my website each user has their own mini web site. With each page they can rearrange their blocks (holds page content). Once they have rearranged their blocks a string like this '3,1|1,1|1,1|1,1|1,1|1,1|1,1|1,1|1,1' goes to the DB .

Each section which is separated by '|' is the colspan and rowspan of a block for a table. So 3,1 is for block1, 3 is the colspan and 1 is the rowspan.

How do I spilt this all up, so it because variables, like;

$block1_colspan = 3;

$block1_rowspan = 1;

and so on for every block?

Answer 1

Your best bet is to first break up the data retrieved from the DB using the explode() function, and I would recommend using arrays for your data.  (Replace the $string variable with the name of your string that containst the data)

Code:

$dimensions=explode("|", $string);

// dimensions variable is an array that has values such as 3,1 in one field, 1,1 in the next...

$numinarray = count($dimensions);

for($i=0;$i<$numinarray;$i++){

list($colspan[], $rowspan[])=explode(",", $dimensions);

}

Your output would be like:

$colspan[0]=3

$rowspan[0]=1

$colspan[1]=1

$rowspan[1]=1

...

Be sure to remember that arrays begin at 0, not 1.

More info on functions used in the sources