I have this array of objects returned by a SQL query where top_id is my parent ID field:
Array (
[0] => stdClass Object ( [id] => 1 [top_id] => 0 [name] => Cat 1 )
[1] => stdClass Object ( [id] => 2 [top_id] => 0 [name] => Cat 2 )
[2] => stdClass Object ( [id] => 3 [top_id] => 0 [name] => Cat 3 )
[3] => stdClass Object ( [id] => 4 [top_id] => 2 [name] => Subcat 1 )
[4] => stdClass Object ( [id] => 5 [top_id] => 2 [name] => Subcat 2 )
[5] => stdClass Object ( [id] => 6 [top_id] => 3 [name] => Subcat 3 )
[6] => stdClass Object ( [id] => 7 [top_id] => 5 [name] => Subcat 4 )
)
Now I need to obtain a nested list like this using PHP:
<ul>
<li>Cat 1</li>
<li>Cat 2
<ul>
<li>Subcat 1</li>
<li>Subcat 2
<ul>
<il>Subcat 3
<ul>
<li>Subcat 4</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Cat 3</li>
</ul>
Any idea?
Thanks
First of all map the objects onto a new hash (array) in which the index is the id
:
// map the array onto hash
$hash = array();
foreach($array as $object)
{
$hash[$object->id] = array('object' => $object);
}
Then transpose this flat hash into a tree-like structure, see this answer for another code example, it's merely the same here:
// build tree from hash
$tree = array();
foreach($hash as $id => &$node)
{
if ($parent = $node['object']->top_id)
$hash[$parent]['children'][] =& $node;
else
$tree[] =& $node;
}
unset($node, $hash);
Finally you can output this tree-like structure as HTML. This can be done with either a stack or recursive. This is one variant with recursion:
// render tree
function render_tree($tree)
{
echo '<ul>', "\n";
foreach($tree as $node)
{
render_node($node);
}
echo '</ul>';
}
// render tree node
function render_node($node, $level = 0)
{
$inset = str_repeat(' ', $level) . ' ';
echo $inset, '<li>', $node['object']->name;
if (isset($node['children']))
{
echo "\n", $inset, ' <ul>', "\n";
foreach($node['children'] as $node)
{
render_node($node, $level+1);
}
echo $inset, ' </ul>', "\n", $inset;
}
echo '</li>', "\n";
}
// output
render_tree($tree);
Output:
<ul>
<li>Cat 1</li>
<li>Cat 2
<ul>
<li>Subcat 1</li>
<li>Subcat 2
<ul>
<li>Subcat 4</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Cat 3
<ul>
<li>Subcat 3</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
Full code Example + HTML Demo.