Comments on: An alternative way to create arrays

By: Abhimanyu Grover

Abhimanyu Grover — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:55:26 +0000

Ah, what a shortcut… real cool !!

By: cakebaker

cakebaker — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:56:34 +0000

@Lech, Brandon: Thanks for your comments!

@Lech: I fixed your comment by adding pre tags.

Yes, that’s a possible way to structure arrays. I think it is a matter of preference whether you like it that way or not. Personally, I don’t like it. I prefer to create private methods to create the sub arrays.

I think in most applications the impact of the described approach on the performance can be ignored ;-)

@Brandon: Yes, that works. I wasn’t aware you could use it in this way, too.

By: Brandon P

Brandon P — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:12:28 +0000

Great post! If I’m not mistaken, Set class can also be instantiated:

$expectedPosts = new Set();
$expectedPosts->insert(‘0.Post.id’, 3);
$expectedPosts->insert(‘0.Post.title’, ‘a title’);
$expectedPosts->insert(‘0.Post.content’, ’some content’);
$expectedPosts->insert(‘1.Post.id’, 4);
$expectedPosts->insert(‘1.Post.title’, ‘another title’);
$expectedPosts->insert(‘1.Post.content’, ’some other content’);
$data = $expectedPosts->get();

By: Lech

Lech — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:59:35 +0000

Doh, html pre tag was stripped, so indentation is missing.. Please view the source to see what I’ve ment in my previous comment :)

By: Lech

Lech — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:52:28 +0000

For more readability I'd rather use a bit different array notation:

$expectedPosts  = array(
        array(
                'Post'  => array(
                        'id'        => 3,
                        'title'     => 'a title',
                        'content'   => 'some content'
                    )
            ),
        array(
                'Post'  => array(
                        'id'        => 4,
                        'title'     => 'another title',
                        'content'   => 'some other content'
                    )
            ),
    );

or using less space (worse case):

$expectedPosts  = array(
        array('Post' => array(
                'id'        => 3,
                'title'     => 'a title',
                'content'   => 'some content'
            )),
        array('Post' => array(
                'id'        => 4,
                'title'     => 'another title',
                'content'   => 'some other content'
            )),
    );

And don't forget to avoid Set::insert in production because of performance ;)

By: cakebaker

cakebaker — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:15:19 +0000

@Howard, Matt: Thanks for your comments!

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:19:24 +0000

The mixed approach is great!

Great way of improving code readability!

I like all these insights very much.

Thanks!

By: Howard

Howard — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:02:18 +0000

Brilliant & simple, but I’d never have noticed it without this post. Will beautify several horrible array constructions (findAll pivots and transformations not able to be done in the SQL) in a couple of my controller actions.

Enjoy reading your blog thru google reader, keep them coming