PHP Variable Variables to set a number as part of a variable name

Question

Using PHP I have a Form that POSTS a Text Line from user input.

Each text line also has other data posted with it. So each text line a user submits has this data:

Text line string
Text line color
Text line font name

A user can submit anywhere from 1 to 6 Text Lines in the Form Post.

So in the backend PHP script I am trying to do something like this...

//Sign Text Lines
$numberOfTextLines = $this->getRequest()->getPost('count'); // 4

for ($line=1; $line <= $numberOfTextLines; $line++) {

    $line1Text = $this->getRequest()->getPost('line-1-text');
    $line1TextColor = $this->getRequest()->getPost('line-1-colorpicker');
    $line1TextFont = $this->getRequest()->getPost('line-1-font');

}

$numberOfTextLinesholds the number of Text Lines the user submitted in the POST.

So with that number of lines, I want to loop over that number of times and setup a variable to hold the Text Line string, color, and font values for each line of text submitted.

In the example above it would be 4 lines of text. So it needs to loop 4 times and set the 3 variables for each line. 4 lines of text x 3 variables = 12 variables set altogether.

In other parts of my script, I should then easily be able to do something like this below to check if a text line exist or not and if so should be able to access it's values...

if(isset($line4Text) && $line4Text != ''){
    echo 'Line 4 Text: ' . $line4Text;
    echo 'Line 4 Text Color: ' . $line4TextColor;
    echo 'Line 4 Text Font: ' . $line4TextFont;
}else{
    $line4Text = '';
    $line4TextColor = '';
    $line4TextFont = '';
}

So you can see, I need to take a number that is stored in a variable $numberOfTextLines that can be any value between 1 and 6.

Based on the number, I need to loop that many times and setup 3 variables for each number. Replacing the number in the Variable names with the number of the line. So in the 3 variables below, the number 4 in the name would be replaced with the corresponding number based on the number in the loop iteration:

$line4Text
$line4TextColor
$line4TextFont

I am not sure how to do this but I think possibly something to do with Variable Variables?

Rizier123 · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-10 22:58:44Z

3

Yes this is exactly for what variable variables are used, you can just use this with curly syntax:

${"line". $line . "Text"} = $this->getRequest()->getPost('line-' . $line . '-text');
${"line" . $line . "TextColor"} = $this->getRequest()->getPost('line-' . $line . '-colorpicker');
${"line" . $line . "TextFont"} = $this->getRequest()->getPost('line-' . $line . '-font');

edited Apr 10, 2015 at 22:58

answered Apr 10, 2015 at 22:55

Rizier123

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1 Comment

JasonDavis Over a year ago

great I thought it was something simple like this but I couldn't seem to get the correct syntax. I'm not used to using {and } like that so that seems to be the trick, thanks!

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