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Counting PHP Array Elements Using count()

6 May 2010 / Leave a Comment

Often it’s useful to know how many elements an array contains. Here are some common reasons for counting the number of elements in an array:

You can then use a for loop to move through the elements
You can display the total number of elements to the user (such as the number of search results returned)
You can calculate the average of the values in the array (in conjunction with array_sum())

PHP makes it easy to count array elements, thanks to its built-in count() function. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to use count() to count the elements in both regular and multidimensional arrays, and how to move through all the elements of an indexed array by using count() and a for loop.

Creating Arrays in PHP

10 March 2010 / 3 Comments

Like most programming languages, PHP lets you create arrays. An array is a special type of variable that can hold many values at once, all accessible via a single variable name. Arrays are very useful whenever you need to work with large amounts of data — such as records from a database — or group related data together.

In this article, you’ll:

Learn how PHP arrays work, and why they’re useful
Look at the difference between indexed arrays and associative arrays, and
Learn how to create arrays within your PHP scripts.

Basic PHP String Operations

28 September 2009 / Leave a Comment

Now that you know how to create strings in PHP, it’s time to try out some basic string operations. In this tutorial you learn how to:

Join strings together
Find out the length of a string, and
Read and change individual characters within a string.

SEO for Beginners

8 August 2008 / Leave a Comment

Search engine optimization (SEO) can seem like a black art to the uninitiated. Many SEO companies promise that your site will get a “top ten ranking” or a “number one position in the search engines”. In reality, there are lots of factors that can influence your site’s position in search results. What’s more, that position can change on a daily basis: you may be number 1 one week, and number 15 the next!

In addition, SEO has a bit of a bad reputation. Many people believe SEO is simply a way to “spam” the search engines; to fool them into including a site in the top ten, even if that site has no useful, relevant content.

However, SEO in its basic form is simply about making it as easy as possible for search engines to find, index, and rank your Web pages based on their content.

This article cuts through the mystery surrounding SEO, and shows how you can start improving your search engine rankings today with some simple, ethical techniques.

[Read more…] about SEO for Beginners

JavaScript Array Basics

5 May 2008 / 4 Comments

Like most languages, JavaScript lets you create arrays to store bunches of values in. An array is simply a sequence, or list, of values. A value in a JavaScript array can be anything from a number or string, through to a function or an object; JavaScript arrays can store pretty much any type of data. A single value in a JavaScript array is called an element.

With JavaScript arrays, you can:

Store any number of values, including no values at all (known as an empty array)
Access any or all the elements of an array through a single variable name
Read and write elements of an array
Loop through all the elements of an array
Join two or more arrays together to make one longer array
Convert an array to one long string
Add or remove elements from the beginning, end, or middle of an array
Reverse the order of the elements in an array
Sort the elements of an array in any order you like
Nest arrays within other arrays

JavaScript stores arrays as Array objects, so most of the things you can do with arrays revolve around the properties and methods of the Array class.

In this introductory article, you look at creating arrays, accessing the contents of arrays, the concept of array lengths, and looping through arrays.

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