Flat PHP Array to Hierarchy Tree

Question

I have an array with the following keys

id   
parent_id
name

A sample array:

array(7) {
  [0]=>
  array(3) {
    [\"id\"         


        

Answer 1

You should use recursion.

Here an exemple of code:

$datas = array(
    array('id' => 1, 'parent' => 0, 'name' => 'Page 1'),
    array('id' => 2, 'parent' => 1, 'name' => 'Page 1.1'),
    array('id' => 3, 'parent' => 2, 'name' => 'Page 1.1.1'),
    array('id' => 4, 'parent' => 3, 'name' => 'Page 1.1.1.1'),
    array('id' => 5, 'parent' => 3, 'name' => 'Page 1.1.1.2'),
    array('id' => 6, 'parent' => 1, 'name' => 'Page 1.2'),
    array('id' => 7, 'parent' => 6, 'name' => 'Page 1.2.1'),
    array('id' => 8, 'parent' => 0, 'name' => 'Page 2'),
    array('id' => 9, 'parent' => 0, 'name' => 'Page 3'),
    array('id' => 10, 'parent' => 9, 'name' => 'Page 3.1'),
    array('id' => 11, 'parent' => 9, 'name' => 'Page 3.2'),
    array('id' => 12, 'parent' => 11, 'name' => 'Page 3.2.1'),
    );

function generatePageTree($datas, $parent = 0, $depth=0){
    $ni=count($datas);
    if($ni === 0 || $depth > 1000) return ''; // Make sure not to have an endless recursion
    $tree = '
';
    for($i=0; $i < $ni; $i++){
        if($datas[$i]['parent'] == $parent){
            $tree .= '
';
            $tree .= $datas[$i]['name'];
            $tree .= generatePageTree($datas, $datas[$i]['id'], $depth+1);
            $tree .= '
';
        }
    }
    $tree .= '
';
    return $tree;
}

echo(generatePageTree($datas));

You can test it at: http://phpfiddle.org/main/code/1qy-5fj

Or if you want the exact format:

function generatePageTree($datas, $parent = 0, $depth = 0){
    $ni=count($datas);
    if($ni === 0 || $depth > 1000) return ''; // Make sure not to have an endless recursion
    $tree = '';
    for($i=0; $i < $ni; $i++){
        if($datas[$i]['parent'] == $parent){
            $tree .= str_repeat('-', $depth);
            $tree .= $datas[$i]['name'] . '
';
            $tree .= generatePageTree($datas, $datas[$i]['id'], $depth+1);
        }
    }
    return $tree;
}

The test: http://phpfiddle.org/main/code/jw3-s1j