PHP OOP confusion for noobie

Question

I have a problem that's born of being a dyed in the wool procedural programmer who's here forced into using some OOP constructs in order to make use of a library I need to use. I am stuck unable to access variables- other than print them out. Let me illustrate:

foreach($html->find('span[class="given-name"]') as $e)
    echo $e->innertext . '<br>';

foreach($html->find('span[class="family-name"]') as $e)
    echo $e->innertext . '<br>';

The above will print out a long list of first names, followed by a long list of surnames. However I want to be able to access them together. For example I want to be able to say something like $myarray["firstname"] = (*whatever is in $e->innertext*) and also $myarray["surnamename"] = (*whatever is in the next $e->innertext*)

When I try the seemingly obvious:

$x = $e->innertext;

it crashes. I assume that's because I am passing a pointer to $x instead of a value, but how on earth do I tell it I want the value - in this case a part of a person's name, to be assigned to $x , or my array, or whatever the variable might be?

I am almost a complete neophyte when it comes to OOP concepts and constructs, so please bear that in mind. Thank you for your assistance!

Answer 1

If your document is well structured and in order, this should do the trick:

$name=array();
$surname=array();

foreach($html->find('span[class="given-name"]') as $e){
    $name[]=$e->innertext;
}

foreach($html->find('span[class="family-name"]') as $e){
    $surname[]=$e->innertext;
}

foreach($name as $key=>$value){
  echo $name[$key] . " " . $surname[$key] . "<br>";
}