Php pushing values to a 2-dimensional array

Question

i've a 2-dimensional array and i want to push values to it with a while loop like;

   $arr[0][1] = 1. value
   $arr[0][2] = 2. value

i ve tried

   while($zRow = mysql_fetch_array($zQuery))
    {
     $props[]['name'] =$zRow['name'];
     $props[]['photo'] =$zRow['thumbnail'];
    }

this loop pushes name to $props[0][name] and thumbnail to $props[1][photo]

i also tried

   $j = 0;
   while($zRow = mysql_fetch_array($zQuery))
    {
     $props[$j]['name'] =$zRow['name'];
     $props[$j]['photo'] =$zRow['thumbnail'];
     $j+=1;     
    }

that works but with this i when i use foreach loop later, it makes trouble like "Illegal offset type"

and here is my foreach loop

    foreach($props as $no)
    {
      echo $props[$no]['name'];
    } 

now my questions; 1) are there any other way than while loop with $j variable like array_push for 2-dimensional arrays 2)how can i use foreach loop for 2-dimensional arrays

Answer 1

You could change the first loop to the following:

while($zRow = mysql_fetch_array($zQuery))
{
    $row = array();
    $row['name'] = $zRow['name'];
    $row['photo'] = $zRow['thumbnail'];
    $props[] = $row;
}

Your method also works, but you need that extra variable.

In your second loop, what you actually need to be doing is:

foreach($props as $index => $array)
{
    echo $props[$index]['name'];
    // OR
    echo $array['name'];
}

Answer 2

Pushing anything onto an array with $myArray[] = 'foo' will increment the array's counter.

For multidimensional array, you need to populate the "inner" array, then push it to the "outer" (in your case $props) array.

while($zRow = mysql_fetch_array($zQuery)) {
    $data = array('name' => $zRow['name'], 'photo' => $zRow['thumbnail']);
    $props[] = $data;
}

To iterate over multidimensional arrays whose depth is known:

foreach ($props as $prop) {
    foreach ($prop as $key => $value) {
        echo "{$key} => {$value}" . PHP_EOL;
    }
}

If the depth of the nesting is not known, you may have to use a recursive function to gather the data.