Search code examples
phphtmlmysqltext-formatting

PHP Keeps Displaying "array" instead of [string]

I'm trying to do a little text formatting and query the SQL all in one hunk of code. Previously, it was doing the listing just fine without formatting, but I need to replace underscores with spaces and remove the category that precedes each string for the purposes of user readability.

<?php
 //doing the query
    $query = "SELECT * FROM parts WHERE itemName LIKE 'Processors:%'";
    $result = mysql_query($query) or die("Unable to query parts table!");
    while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
 //explode removes the preceding category, str_replace obviously replaces the _
        $labelCPU = explode(':',str_replace('_',' ',$row['itemName']));
 //displays the option in HTML
        $aa .= "<option value='{$row['partID']}'>$labelCPU</option>";
        }
?>
<select name="cpu"><? echo $aa; ?></select>

When it echoes the variable in the list, I can tell the query is still executing fine because I am getting the appropriate number of options, but they all display as "Array".

Where am I going wrong here?

Solution

  • Your line below: 

    $labelCPU = explode(':',str_replace('_',' ',$row['itemName']));

    Is changing it into an array. Explode basically takes a string and converts it to an array splitting it by the character you specify (in this case ':').

    You need to do something like:

    for ($i=0; $i<count($labelCPU); $i++) {
    $aa .= "<option value='{$row['partID']}'>$labelCPU[$i]</option>";
}

    I suspect you are using explode to get the category name after ":". So perhaps this would work better:

        $aa .= "<option value='{$row['partID']}'>$labelCPU[1]</option>";