How Can I Effectively Print the Contents of a Nested Array in PHP?

Printing Array Content in PHP

When working with arrays in PHP, it can be helpful to echo or print their contents. However, you may encounter issues when trying to display the array as a flat list. Let's explore how to resolve this issue.

Given Array Structure

Consider the following array structure:

$results = [
  'data' => [
    [
      'page_id' => 204725966262837,
      'type' => 'WEBSITE',
    ],
    [
      'page_id' => 163703342377960,
      'type' => 'COMMUNITY',
    ],
  ],
];

Attempting to Echo Nested Content

If you attempt to echo the array contents using a foreach loop, the output will include the nested array structure:

foreach ($results as $result) {
    echo $result->type;
    echo "<br>";
}

This will result in the following output:

WEBSITE
<br>
COMMUNITY
<br>

Flattening the Output

To display the array contents as a flat list, you can use the following methods:

1. print_r()

Print the array using print_r(). For a more visually appealing output, you can enclose it with

 tags:</p>
<div class="code" style="position:relative; padding:0px; margin:0px;"><pre class="brush:php;toolbar:false">echo '<pre class="brush:php;toolbar:false">';
print_r($results);
echo '

';

Copy after login

2. var_dump()

Use var_dump() to display additional information about the array, including data types and lengths:

var_dump($results);

3. foreach() with Direct Access

You can iterate over the array and directly access the desired values, such as the type property:

foreach ($results['data'] as $result) {
    echo $result['type'];
    echo "<br>";
}

This will produce the desired output:

WEBSITE
<br>
COMMUNITY
<br>

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