associating two separate arrays for itinerary system

Question

I am trying to build a travel itinerary system. The user selects the dates of travel, and then may add items to each day.

I have an array of dates, stored in a session in the format:

array(
    (int) 0 => '2012-08-25',
    (int) 1 => '2012-08-26',
    (int) 2 => '2012-08-27'
)

They will then choose attractions, which I wish to store in an array in the format:

array(
(int) 0 => array(
    'Attraction' => array(
        'attraction_id' =>'1',
        'name' => 'Place One',

    )
),
(int) 1 => array(
    'Attraction' => array(
        'attraction_id' => '2',
        'name' => 'Place Two',

    )
),

I'd like to be able to output:

• 2012-08-25
  • Place One
  • Place Two
• 2012-08-26
  • nothing here yet!
• 2012-08-27
  • nothing here yet!

So, each item of the first array contains an array of items, if that makes sense. I am struggling with the logic of associating the keys of the days array with the items array.

I looked at array_merge but that doesn't seem to do what I need.

Is there an easy way to achieve this?

Answer 1

This code does exactly what you ask. Unfortunately, I fear your question doesn't reflect your aim given the example. Using keys to link data will led to 1-1 relationship, where as you seem to need a 1-n. You should have a foreign key field in the attraction array, like date_id.

$array= array();

foreach($dates as $date_key=>$date){
   $array[$date]=array();
   foreach($attractions as $attraction_key=>$attraction){
        if($date_key==$attraction_key){
           $array[$date][]=$attraction['Attraction']['name'];
         }   
     }
}