Minor annoyance with indices in PageArrays

[mindplay.dk]

I find myself doing a lot of this:

<?php $index=0; foreach ($pages as $page): $index++; ?>
....
<?php if ($index != $last_index): ?>
 <hr />
<?php endif; ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>

I find that I need $index variables often, because foreach($pages as $index=>$page) does not work - because $index is the Page ID and not the item index.

Why is that?

I can get to the Page ID in any number of other ways, if I need it - $page->id works fine for most uses.

Rarely do I find myself actually needing to access a Page in a PageArray by it's ID - and if I did, $pages->get($page_id) would suffice just fine.

Array indices are commonly useful, and they really should be numeric indices, and not some other key.

My point is that items in an array do have an index - but that index is hidden/inaccessible during iterations with PageArray, which favors a specific use-case. Numeric indices are generally useful in lots of different use-cases, and in all of those, you're now forced to introduce intermediate variables...

I guess it may be too late to change this without breaking backwards compatibility, but maybe something to put on the to-do list for a major release...

[Soma]

If($pages->last() === $page)..

[ryan]

You've got me confused here. PageArrays are numerically indexed, starting from 0. Try this:

foreach($pages->find("id>0, limit=20, sort=random") as $index => $item) {
 echo "$index: $item<br />";
}

[Soma]

Also foreach($parr as $key => $p ) works fine ... Key is not pid.

[mindplay.dk]

Boy, do I feel dumb now

I'm not even sure how I managed to conclude that the indices were IDs...

The real problem in my case was that $pages->count returns null, while $pages->count() returns the actual number of items. (unrelated, but that seems to throw me off more often than not...)

[apeisa]

I have also stumbled on $pageArray->count many times.. it would be nice little tweak to make it same as count(). Like parent and parent() etc.

[Soma]

While at it make the ->first() also work as ->first.

[diogo]

And all of those that don't have parameters: last, shuffle, pop, reverse, shift, getRandom, getTotal, etc, etc

[ryan]

WireArray types may be associative and are designed to support direct access via indexes. So you could have a collision with a WireArray that has a index of "count" (or one of the other suggested direct access properties). While it's certainly feasible to support that for numerically indexed WireArrays, I'm reluctant to introduce conventions that can't stay consistent across WireArrays.

[elabx]

I'm sorry to bring this up from so long time ago, but I'm pulling my hair with this. I'm having the problem mindplay had initially, I can't seem to access the $key value of the items in an array of images, it just returns the name of the image.

In this case, logos is an image field containing images, which to my understanding is also a WireArray.

I tried what Ryan suggested:

foreach( $page->logos as $index => $item) {echo "$index: $item<br />";}

But I get this:

client3.png: client3.png

client4.png: client4.png

client2.png: client2.png

client6.png: client6.png

client1.png: client1.png

client5.png: client5.png

client8.png: client8.png

client7.png: client7.png

I'm using PHP 5.6.7 in a MAMP installation on OS X 10.11.1 and latest Processwire 2.7

[LostKobrakai]

The pageimages class is actually keyed by filename, so this is the expected behaviour. To remove the keys and get numbered indexes just use $page->logos->getArray()

[elabx]

The pageimages class is actually keyed by filename, so this is the expected behaviour. To remove the keys and get numbered indexes just use $page->logos->getArray()

I tried your suggestion in this way:

$s = $page->logos->getArray();
foreach($s as $index => $item) {
	echo "$index: $item<br />";
}

It still gives the same result  

[Martijn Geerts]

You can always use the array_values() function to get an indexed array.

array_values($page->logos->getArray())

[elabx]

You can always use the array_values() function to get an indexed array.

array_values($page->logos->getArray())

Totally forgot about array_values()! That worked!! Though I wonder if I'm doing something wrong or my dev environment has something funky going on. 

Thank you both guys!

[LostKobrakai]

No funk on your side: getValues() was the method to get the array without the keys.