ITT #13: Build a Menu with Recursive Functions

To continue my recent obsession with array handling, I want to spend this week talking about recursive functions and their application in dealing with arrays.

The goal of our exercise today is to build a menu, complete with sub-menu, all based off one function that runs recursively.

What Is Recursion? In computer science, recursion is a concept in which a function can call itself. This is similar to the idea of looping in PHP, but it provides an opportunity, in the case of array handling, to add more fine-grain control into a program.

On a basic level, recursion can be illustrated with the following code:

function plusOne($x) { if($x<10) { echo ++$x, "<br />"; plusOne($x); } else { echo 'Finished! <br />'; } } Calling this function will result in the following output:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Finished! Obviously, the above could have been accomplished very simply with a loop... read more

ITT #12: Display Random Entries with PHP

I ran into an interesting problem while developing a new blogging system recently where I needed to generate a subset of array elements in random order.

A random subset of elements is useful for displaying a sampling of entries that changes with every page load, such as four random blog entries, a photo gallery that stays interesting even if new photos aren't uploaded, or, if you want to use a sweet content slider, you could show random portfolio or blog entry previews and keep your slider fresh.

Defining the Problem

The Array First things first, we need to know what we're dealing with. For the purpose of this example, we'll be using a multi-dimensional array that looks something like this:

$entries = array( array( 'title' => 'Entry One', 'author' => 'Jason Lengstorf', 'date' => 'April... read more

ITT #11: A Tip for Using Arrays

This week's Instant Tip Tuesday is a short one because I'm under some pretty tight deadlines. I'm still looking for developers to help out by guest blogging on Ennui Design, so contact me if you'd like to show your developing chops!

On a quick vanity note, Chad Engle did an interview with me over on the DCTH site, so head over there and check that out!

Manipulate Arrays to Handle the First Element Differently

Arrays, though they're incredibly useful, can also easily become confusing. This is especially true when dealing with multi-dimensional arrays, like a collection of entries from a database (a blog, for instance, would have at least two dimensions in an array of entries: each blog is an array of the different pieces of the blog, such as title, author... read more

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