question about associative arrays...

The short answer is that you don't. The key of an associative array has to be unique. If you try to put two rows into an associative array that have the same key, the second will overwrite the first.

$x = array();
$x["2012-01-01"] = "A";
$x["2012-01-01"] = "B";
$x["2012-01-14"] = "c";
$x["2012-01-01"] = "D";

In your example data, you have three different rows with the same date value, so if you tried to use the date as the key, you'd end up with a total of two rows - one with a key of 2012-01-1 (with a value of D) and one with 2012-01-14 (with a value of c).

What you CAN do is nest associative arrays, if you want to retain that information:


$x = array();
$x[1] = array("2012-01-01","A");
$x[2] = array("2012-01-01","B");
$x[3] = array("2012-01-14","c");
$x[4] = array("2012-01-01","D");

Now you can do a foreach loop through that array, like this:
foreach($x as $id => $record)
{
   echo $record[0]; // date
   echo $record[1]; // notes
}

Or you could group them like this:

$x = array();
$x["2012-01-01"] = array();
$x["2012-01-01"][] = "A";
$x["2012-01-01"][] = "B";
$x["2012-01-01"][] = "D";

$x["2012-01-14"] = array();
$x["2012-01-14"][] = "c";

foreach($x as $date => $notesPerDate)
{
  echo "For {$date}:\n";
  foreach($notesPerDate as $note)
  {
     echo $note . "\n";
  }
}

Actually, if you do each row as an associative array, "id", "user_id", "date", and "notes" will be the keys and each row will contain different values for each. More information is needed to understand your objective. Otherwise, the following will cycle through the values:

$result = mysql_query('SELECT date, notes FROM table_name');
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result) ) {
$target_date = $row['date'];
$target_notes = $row['notes'];
}

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shown below are my code snippets...I have built a calendar application. The calendar shows events for a particular date but with the following code, as you mentioned above only one record shows up for each date event though there are multiple events for a particular date.

//following query is used to check if there is an event on a particular date.
$events = array();
$query_1 = "SELECT patient_id,visit_notes, visit_id,DATE_FORMAT(visit_date,'%Y-%m-%d') AS event_date FROM patient_visitschedule WHERE visit_date LIKE '$year-$month%'";
$result_1 = mysql_query($query_1) or die('cannot get results!');
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result_1)) {
$events[$row['event_date']][] = $row;
//print_r(array_values($row)).'</br>';

}
..........
{
    // Calculate the date and save it to the array
    $date = strtotime("+$count day", $timestamp); //$timestamp = strtotime($startDate) where $startDate = s_date.
      $cell[] = date("Y-m-d", $date);//value to pass to the next page
   
      
      }

.......

$cellDate = $cell[$i];//date to pass to the DB

..........


            //for($n=1; $n<$num_rows; $n++){
            if (isset($events[$cellDate]))
            {
        foreach($events[$cellDate] as $event) {
                  
        $calendar= '<div class="event">'.$event['visit_notes'].'</div></br>';
             }
            
      }
      else {
        $calendar= str_repeat('<p></p>',2);
      }
    $calendar.= '</div></td>';

Thanks for the help.

A

Try doing a print_r($events) right after you build $events

The output I get is:

Array ( [2012-01-09] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => Visit in the morning. [visit_id] => 7 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) ) ) Array ( [2012-01-09] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => Visit in the morning. [visit_id] => 7 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) [1] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => Visit in the evening. [visit_id] => 8 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) ) ) Array ( [2012-01-09] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => Visit in the morning. [visit_id] => 7 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) [1] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => Visit in the evening. [visit_id] => 8 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) [2] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => hello [visit_id] => 9 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) ) )

Hmmm, what's up with that format specifier at the end of this...
'$year-$month%'

I don't understand that... am I missing something?

$events[$row['event_date']][] = $row;

It looks ok,  adding via this code you don't overwrite $events[$row['event_date']] but extend $events[$row['event_date']][], as a 2d array with one dimension being the date and the other being 0..record count-1, the problem just is, the $row is not stored as it's values, but as a reference and in the end all events['2012-01.09'][0...n] are the same last $row added.

Rather use
$events[$row['event_date']][] = unserialise(serialise($row));

Check out print_r($events); after the while() loop, after adding all rows.

Bye, Olaf.

Hi Olaf, I updated the code as follows;

//following query is used to check if there is an event on a particular date.
$events = array();
$query_1 = "SELECT patient_id,visit_notes, visit_id,DATE_FORMAT(visit_date,'%Y-%m-%d') AS event_date FROM patient_visitschedule WHERE visit_date LIKE '$year-$month%'";
$result_1 = mysql_query($query_1) or die('cannot get results!');
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result_1)) {
$events[$row['event_date']][] = unserialise(serialise($row));

//print_r($events);
}
print_r($events);

With this I get the following error;

Fatal error: Call to undefined function unserialise() in C:\xampp\htdocs\cp\module_p\viewSchedule.php on line 74

Try using a "z" instead of an "s" in serialize and unserialize.

Thanks, that works. My output now is;

Array ( [2012-01-09] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => Visit in the morning. [visit_id] => 7 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) [1] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => Visit in the evening. [visit_id] => 8 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) [2] => Array ( [patient_id] => 6 [visit_notes] => hello [visit_id] => 9 [event_date] => 2012-01-09 ) ) )

But, I am still getting only one value as the output from my foreach loop.

Thanks for the help,
A

In your original code posted last night at 19:57:03 you have:

        foreach($events[$cellDate] as $event) {
                  
        $calendar= '<div class="event">'.$event['visit_notes'].'</div></br>';
             }
            
      }
      else {
        $calendar= str_repeat('<p></p>',2);
      }

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On lines three and eight you need to concatenate the $calendar string each time instead of replace the string:

        foreach($events[$cellDate] as $event) {
                  
        $calendar .= '<div class="event">'.$event['visit_notes'].'</div></br>';
             }
            
      }
      else {
        $calendar .= str_repeat('<p></p>',2);
      }

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@xmediaman - Don't forget to initialize the variable before trying to append to it. Otherwise he will get a PHP warning.

gr8gonzo is right. The $calendar variable must be initialized before the loop begins. I assumed it to be initialized elsewhere in your code and should have mentioned that.

I didn't see his comment when I posted mine. His comment is much more detailed than mine and may be more useful for you.

Dear gr8gonzo, you nailed it! Excellent, thanks a zillion for you help.

A

Excellent!

Sorry, gr8gonzo;

I had to use unserialize(serialize($row)) all the time using  mysqli, maybe that's related to that. My bad not testing mysql_query() first, to see if that effect plays a role at all.

But we all were rather focused on $events instead of looking at how the final html generated in $calender was not appended to but always overwritten.

Glad it's solved anyway.

Bye, Olaf.

@Olaf - Ah, that makes more sense. Yes, PHP does try to pass objects by reference automatically, so using mysqli would explain that. As far as I know, all other values are passed by value unless you explicitly tell PHP to pass by reference with &=.

Just for your own purposes, you can probably make your scripts more speed-and-memory-efficient by populating a new generic object with the values from the original rather than running the serialize/unserialize combo. The serialization process takes some time and memory to construct the temporary value, and the unserialization process takes even longer to parse the string and figure out how to re-construct the original object. If you generate a new generic object, you only take up the memory of the new object and you skip all that extra processing. Just a friendly suggestion.

Thanks, gr8gonzo.

I'll see what I end up with, I've made a new question out of this.

Ray's already at it. Maybe a solution rather is to use PDO than mysqli, especially with bind_result() it seems you get this kind of referencing problems.

So actually the plain straight way via mysql-functions is having lesss problems in this respect. It's just I like to prepare statements and bind parameters to avoid sql injection problems.

Bye, Olaf.