Patrick's Playground

Not for the first time I’ve searched for a way to visualize a multidimensional array in a tree view in my web browser without directly using echo or print. I wasn’t able to find a concrete solution for this previously. However, this time I was put on the right track by a post of Kevin van Zonneveld. I’ve given it my own (quick and dirty as can be seen from the code) twist to get it to work. By just calling:

print implode(ArrayFunctions::toString($array));

The array is shown as a tree structure on the screen.
The implementation is as follows:

	<?php
	class ArrayFunctions {
	public static function toString($array){
	$result = array();
	$depth = 0;
	foreach($array as $k => $v) {
	$show_val = ( is_array($v) ? "" : $v );
	// show the indents
	$result []= str_repeat(" ", $depth);
	if($depth == 0) {
	// this is a root node. no parents
	$result []= "O ";
	} elseif(is_array($v)) {
	// this is a normal node. parents and children
	$result []= "+ ";
	} else {
	// this is a leaf node. no children
	$result []= "- ";
	}
	// show the actual node
	if ($show_val == "") {
	$result []= "<strong>{$k}</strong>:
	";
	}
	else {
	$result []= $k . " (".$show_val.")"."
	";
	}
	if(is_array($v)) {
	// this is what makes it recursive, rerun for childs
	$temp = self::toTree($v, ($depth+1));
	foreach($temp as $t) {
	$result []= $t;
	}
	}
	}
	return implode($result);
	}
	private static function showtype($show_val) {
	// convert bools to text and quote 'text bools'!
	if (is_string($show_val) &&
	($show_val == "true" || $show_val == "false")) {
	return "\"{$show_val}\"";
	}
	elseif (is_bool($show_val) && $show_val === true) {
	return "true";
	}
	elseif (is_bool($show_val) && $show_val === false) {
	return "false";
	}
	elseif (is_null($show_val)) {
	return "null";
	}
	else {
	return $show_val;
	}
	}
	private static function toTree($pieces, $depth = 0) {
	foreach($pieces as $k => $v) {
	// skip the baseval thingy. Not a real node.
	//if($k == "__base_val") continue;
	// determine the real value of this node.
	$show_val = ( is_array($v) ? "" : $v );
	$show_val = self::showtype($show_val);
	// show the indents
	$result []= str_repeat(" ", $depth);
	if($depth == 0) {
	// this is a root node. no parents
	$result []= "O ";
	} elseif(is_array($v)) {
	// this is a normal node. parents and children
	$result []= "+ ";
	} else {
	// this is a leaf node. no children
	$result []= "- ";
	}
	// show the actual node
	if ($show_val == "") {
	$result []= "<strong>{$k}</strong>:
	";
	}
	else {
	$result []= $k . ": <i>{$show_val}</i>
	";
	}
	if(is_array($v)) {
	// this is what makes it recursive, rerun for childs
	$temp = self::toTree($v, ($depth+1));
	if (is_array($temp)) {
	foreach($temp as $t) {
	$result []= $t;
	}
	}
	else {
	$result []= $t;
	}
	}
	}
	return $result;
	}
	}
	?>

view raw Multidimensional array to plain text tree structure code hosted with by GitHub