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.