Beginning Perspective on PHP Arrays

Josh Otwell
6 min readAug 12, 2020

Arrays are one of the most important PHP data types. An array is composed of 1 or more key/value pairs and can store any type (E.g., strings, integers, decimal numbers, etc…). Array values (or elements) are accessed via a key (index), which is either numerical-based or string-based. Arrays composed of string-based indexes are known as associative arrays. Keep reading for an introductory-level coverage of PHP arrays, as I understand them…

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

OS, Software, and DB used:

  • OpenSuse Leap 15.1
  • PHP 7.2.5

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Numerical-based keys

Creating an array in PHP is super easy. One way is using the array() construct:

$activities = array(‘walking’, ‘fishing’, ‘reading’, ‘programming’);

We can see the $activities array individual elements using var_dump():

echo ‘<pre>’;
var_dump($activities);
echo ‘</pre>’;
array(4) {
[0]=>
string(7) “walking”
[1]=>
string(7) “fishing”
[2]=>
string(7) “reading”
[3]=>…

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Josh Otwell

SQL | PHP | Photography. Sign-up for my free developer newsletter, OpenLampTech, here: openlamptech.substack.com