In php it may sometimes be important to print all of the elements contained inside of an array. In most instances you need to print them out forwards, starting with the element stored in the first array key, but sometimes you may need to print out the contents backwards. This process can be tricky and hard to understand for a lot of people so I tried to simplify it by making a function that will print out all the elements for you. Here it is:

function printAllArray($name,$action){
if($action == “foreward” || $action == NULL || $action == “”){
$amountIn = count($name);
for($x = 0; $x <= $amountIn;$x++){
print($name[$x]);
}
}
if($action == “backward”){
$amountIn = count($name);
for($x = $amountIn; $x >= 0;$x–){
print($name[$x]);
}
}
}

Here is a basic overview of what is going on. A function called printAllArray is created with the parameters $name, which is the name of the array you want to print the contents of, and $actions which can either be ‘foreward’ or ‘backward’. Then I made two if statements which decide what to do if you want to print out the contents forwards or backwards. In both if statements a variable is created to see how many keys are stored in the array so it knows how much to print, where to start, and when to stop. Then a for loop is created. In the first if statement, the one that prints out the contents forwards, it creates a variable x which is initialized to zero, the loop keeps repeating as long as x is less than or equal to the amount of elements in the array so that it knows when to stop, then every time after it loops it adds one to x so that the for loop terminates eventually. Inside the loop it prints out the contents of the array key that the loop is currently on. The other for loop in the second if statement is almost exactly opposite. If you do not exactly understand this or the explanation is unclear it doesn’t matter because I will show you how to work this without knowing exactly what it does. If you want to know what it does anyways just comment with your questions.

Alright, now to show you how to use it. Well whenever you want to use this function copy it into the beginning of your php code. Then at wherever you want to print the code type the following:

printAllArray($arrayName,’foreward’);

You can replace $arrayName with whatever the name of your array is and you can replace ‘foreward’ with ‘backward’ if you wish.

I hope you all found this useful XD