Associative Arrays


The associative arrays are very similar to numeric arrays in term of functionality but they are different in terms of their index. Associative array will have their index as string so that you can establish a strong association between key and values.

To store the salaries of employees in an array, a numerically indexed array would not be the best choice. Instead, we could use the employees names as the keys in our associative array, and the value would be their respective salary.

NOTE: Don’t keep associative array inside double quote while printing otheriwse it would not return any value.

Example

<html>
<body>
<?php
/* First method to associate create array. */
$salaries = array( 
		   "mohammad" => 2000, 
		   "qadir" => 1000, 
		   "zara" => 500
		  );

echo "Salary of mohammad is ". $salaries['mohammad'] . "<br />";
echo "Salary of qadir is ".  $salaries['qadir']. "<br />";
echo "Salary of zara is ".  $salaries['zara']. "<br />";

/* Second method to create array. */
$salaries['mohammad'] = "high";
$salaries['qadir'] = "medium";
$salaries['zara'] = "low";

echo "Salary of mohammad is ". $salaries['mohammad'] . "<br />";
echo "Salary of qadir is ".  $salaries['qadir']. "<br />";
echo "Salary of zara is ".  $salaries['zara']. "<br />";
?>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Salary of mohammad is 2000
Salary of qadir is 1000
Salary of zara is 500
Salary of mohammad is high
Salary of qadir is medium
Salary of zara is low

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