Generate PHP Array to mimic JSON format

Question

im a bit rusty with PHP and need some advice/help.

I am trying to generate a rough and quick api that returns some JSON data to populate a JavaScript chart. I am using PHP to query the Database. I can retrieve the stats per month/year, however I am struggling on a way to generate the PHP array prior to using JSON_ENCODE().

The format I am trying to get is:

                   {
                    y: 'January',
                    a: 150,
                    b: 90,
                    c: 50
                }, {
                    y: 'February',
                    a: 75,
                    b: 65,
                    c: 50
                }, {
                    y: 'March',
                    a: 50,
                    b: 40,
                    c: 50
                }, {
                    y: 'April',
                    a: 75,
                    b: 65,
                    c: 50
                }

and so on..through to December. a = 2014 / b = 2015 / c = 2016.

I have a DB query which takes a $year and $month parameter and it returns a count of records.

My initial thought was to use three arrays:

$months = array("January","February","March","April","May","June","July","August","September","October","November","December");
$years = array("2014","2015","2016");
$yearlabels = array("a","b","c");

However I cant see how I can do this to return an array in the format I want.

Any ideas?

Why not make the array with the desired format straight from the start, something like: $array = [ [ "y" => "January", "a" => numA, "b" => "numB", "c" => "numC" ], [....]] and then json_encode($array) — apokryfos
– apokryfos, Commented May 24, 2016 at 11:26

Shalu Singhal · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-24 11:29:23Z

1

You can try

$out = [];

foreach($months as $month) {
   $arr = array();
   $arr['y'] = $month;
   foreach($yearlabels as $label) {
      $arr[$label] = '2';
   }
   $out[] = $arr;
}

echo json_encode($out);

I hope this will help you. If not then let me know.

answered May 24, 2016 at 11:29

Shalu Singhal

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1 Comment

rosey85uk Over a year ago

Hi Shalu, thanks. This worked perfectly with a few tweaks :) knew I was over complicating things!

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