I create a $values array and then extract the elements into local scope.
$values['status'.$i] = $newStatus[$i];
extract($values);
When I render an html page. I'm using the following
<?php if(${'status'.$i} == 'OUT'){ ?>
but am confused by what the ${ is doing and why $status.$i won't resolve
$status.$i means
take value of
$statusvariable and concatenate it with value of$ivariable.
${'status'.$i} means
take value of
$ivariable, append id to'status'string and take value of a variable'status'.$i
Example:
With $i equals '2' and $status equals 'someStatus':
$status.$i evaluated to 'someStatus' . '2', which is 'someStatus2'
${'status'.$i} evaluated to ${'status'.'2'} which is $status2. And if $status2 is defined variable - you will get some value.
I wanted to add to the accepted answer with a suggested alternate way of achieving your goal.
Let's assume the following,
$status1 = 'A status';
$status = 'foo';
$i = 1;
$var_name = 'status1';
and then,
echo $status1; // A status
echo $status.$i; // foo1
echo ${'status'.$i}; // A status
echo ${"status$i"}; // A status
echo ${$var_name}; // A status
The string inside the curly brackets is resolved first, effectively resulting in ${'status1'} which is the same as $status1. This is a variable variable.
Read about variable variables - http://php.net/manual/en/language.variables.variable.php
Multidimensional arrays are probably an easier way to manage your data.
For example, instead of somthing like
$values['status'.$i] = $newStatus[$i];
how about
$values['status'][$i] = $newStatus[$i];
Now we can use the data like,
extract($values);
if($status[$i] == 'OUT'){
// do stuff
}
You may even find that you can prepare your status array differently. I'm assuming you're using some sort of loop? If so, these are both equivalent,
for ($i=0; $i<count($newStatus); $i++){
$values['status'][$i] = $newStatus[$i];
}
and,
$values['status'] = $newStatus;
:)
