PHP Associative Array

PHP allows you to associate name/label with each array elements in PHP using => symbol. Such way, you can easily remember the element because each element is represented by label than an incremented number.

Definition

There are two ways to define associative array:

1st way:

snippet

$salary=array("Sonoo"=>"550000","Vimal"=>"250000","Ratan"=>"200000");

2nd way:

snippet

$salary["Sonoo"]="550000";
$salary["Vimal"]="250000";
$salary["Ratan"]="200000";

Example

File: arrayassociative1.php

snippet

"550000","Vimal"=>"250000","Ratan"=>"200000");
echo "Sonoo salary: ".$salary["Sonoo"]."";
echo "Vimal salary: ".$salary["Vimal"]."";
echo "Ratan salary: ".$salary["Ratan"]."";
?>

Output:

Output

Sonoo salary: 550000 Vimal salary: 250000 Ratan salary: 200000

File: arrayassociative2.php

snippet

Output:

Output

Sonoo salary: 550000 Vimal salary: 250000 Ratan salary: 200000

Traversing PHP Associative Array

By the help of PHP for each loop, we can easily traverse the elements of PHP associative array.

snippet

"550000","Vimal"=>"250000","Ratan"=>"200000");
foreach($salary as $k => $v) {
echo "Key: ".$k." Value: ".$v."";
}
?>

Output:

Output

Key: Sonoo Value: 550000 Key: Vimal Value: 250000 Key: Ratan Value: 200000