PHP: Condense array of similar strings into one merged array
- by Matt Andrews
Hi everyone.
Working with an array of dates (opening times for a business). I want to condense them to their briefest possible form.
So far, I started out with this structure
Array
(
[Mon] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Tue] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Wed] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Thu] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Fri] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Sat] => 12noon-11pm
[Sun] => 12noon-9:30pm
)
What I want to achieve is this:
Array
(
[Mon-Fri] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Sat] => 12noon-11pm
[Sun] => 12noon-9:30pm
)
I've tried writing a recursive function and have managed to output this so far:
Array
(
[Mon-Fri] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Tue-Fri] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Wed-Fri] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Thu-Fri] => 12noon-2:45pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
[Sat] => 12noon-11pm
[Sun] => 12noon-9:30pm
)
Can anybody see a simple way of comparing the values and combining the keys where they're similar? My recursive function is basically two nested foreach() loops - not very elegant.
Thanks,
Matt
EDIT: Here's my code so far, which produces the 3rd array above (from the first one as input):
$last_time = array('t' => '', 'd' => ''); // blank array for looping
$i = 0;
foreach($final_times as $day=>$time) {
if($last_time['t'] != $time ) { // it's a new time
if($i != 0) { $print_times[] = $day . ' ' . $time; }
// only print if it's not the first, otherwise we get two mondays
} else { // this day has the same time as last time
$end_day = $day;
foreach($final_times as $day2=>$time2) {
if($time == $time2) {
$end_day = $day2;
}
}
$print_times[] = $last_time['d'] . '-' . $end_day . ' ' . $time;
}
$last_time = array('t' => $time, 'd' => $day);
$i++;
}
