Merge array items into string

Question

How do I merge all the array items into a single string?

Answer 1

If you are trying to just concatenate all of strings in the array, then you should look at implode().

Answer 2

Use the implode function.

For example:

$fruits = array('apples', 'pears', 'bananas');
echo implode(',', $fruits);

Answer 3

If you want to merge the string representation of a group of objects into a single string, you can use implode on an array of those objects. The objects' classes just have to have the __toString() magic method defined.

class myClass {

  protected $name;
  protected $value;
  public function __construct($name,$value) {
    $this->name = $name;
    $this->value = $value;
  }

  public function __toString() {
    return $this->name . '/' . $this->value;
  }
}

$obj1 = new myClass('one',1);
$obj2 = new myClass('two',2);

$obj_array = array($obj1, $obj2);

$string_of_all_objects = implode('|',$obj_array);

echo $string_of_all_objects; // 'one/1|two/2'

I found that trick useful to quickly get a string representation of a group of objects for display on a webpage. No need to loop through the object array with foreach and using echo $obj->get('name').

EDIT: And here's and example with a "collection" class. I have 2 outputs (echos) at the end. The 2nd one should work, but I'm not sure about the 1st.

class myCollectionClass implements IteratorAggregate {
  protected $objects = array();

  public function __construct() {};
  public function add(myClass $object) {
    $this->objects[] = $object;
    return $this; // fluid
  }
  public function getIterator() { // for the interface
    return new ArrayIterator($this->objects);
  }
  public function __toString() {
    return implode($this->objects);
  }
}
$my_collection = new myCollectionClass();
$my_collection->add($obj1)->add($obj2); // add both myClass objects to the collection. can do in one line because fluid

//echo implode('|',$my_collection); // Comment out myCollectionClass's __toString method to test this. does it work? I'm not sure. But the next line will work thanks to myCollectionClass' __toString, which itself uses myClass's __toString

echo $my_collection; // same output as previous block before EDIT.

Answer 4

For Multi Array such as:

 $multi_arrays = array(
            0 => array('model' => 'Product 1'),
            1 => array('model' => 'Product 2'),
            2 => array('model' => 'Product 3'),
            3 => array('model' => 'Product 4'));

 $pattern = array('/\[/', '/\]/', '/{"model":/', '/}/', '/\"/');

 $str_models = preg_replace($pattern, '', json_encode( $multi_arrays));

The result will be:

Product 1, Product 2, Product 3, Product 4

You can change pattern for get any result you want!