Problem to generate nested ul lists using PHP
- by Michael Mao
Hi all:
I am working on a front-end web app where a nested unordered list would be used for the jQuery plugin mcdropdown.
Here is the data structure from PHP: a nested array of arrays :
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[fullpath] => ../foil/alphanumeric/
[depth] => 0
)
[1] => Array
(
[fullpath] => ../foil/alphanumeric/letters/
[depth] => 1
)
[2] => Array
(
[fullpath] => ../foil/alphanumeric/numbers/
[depth] => 1
)
[3] => Array
(
[fullpath] => ../foil/alphanumeric/numbers/symbols/
[depth] => 2
)
)
Basically, I took the excellent answer from this question on SO, modified it a bit :
global $fullpaths; // $fullpaths contains the above data structure in print_r
$result = '';
$currentDepth = -1;
while(!empty($fullpaths))
{
$currentNode = array_shift($fullpaths);
if($currentNode['depth'] > $currentDepth)
{
$result .='<ul>';
}
if($currentNode['depth'] < $currentDepth)
{
$result .=str_repeat('</ul>', $currentDepth - $currentNode['depth']);
}
$result .= '<li>'. $currentNode['fullpath'] .'</li>';
$currentDepth = $currentNode['depth'];
if(empty($fullpaths))
{
$result .= str_repeat('</ul>', 1 + $currentDepth);
}
}
print $result;
and got the following output:
<ul>
<li>../foil/alphanumeric/</li>
<ul>
<li>../foil/alphanumeric/letters/</li>
<li>../foil/alphanumeric/numbers/</li>
<ul>
<li>../foil/alphanumeric/numbers/symbols/</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
Which cannot be accepted by the mcdropdown jQuery plugin, it expects something like this:
<li rel="1">
'Alphanumeric'
<ul>
<li rel="2">'Letters'</li>
<li rel="3">'Numbers'
<ul>
<li rel="4">'Symbols'</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
To be frank, I don't quite understand how the answer from that question works, I have been trying to modify that solution to cope with my situation, but still failed.
Any help and suggestion is much appropriated in advance.
