[SOLVED] Variable variable array outputs all elements as $i,$i,$i

[Slips]

Hi all, this is my first post here, im a beginner with php and im havnig this issue which seems quite simple to resolve, but i havent been able to figure out..

 

 

Heres

 

 

Im using a variable variable to display an array but when it displays all elements as $i , but when i use the direct array variable it, it displays fine. So heres a breakdown of whats going on in this script:

 

 

- Its basically for listing the top 10 cities of the respective country, based on the number of pics in that city's -gallery..

-So if someone clicks say, Japan - the top 10 cities in japan with the most no. of pics in their gallerys will be load(ajax call).

- The script works like this:

  Each city has its mysql table. The total no. of pics are the total no. of rows.

  When someone clicks on a country link, the script first gets a list of all its cities from its cities array.

  Clicking japan will make the script use $japan_cities('japancity1' = > 'Full city name')...etc from an external file called countryarrays.php which has the list of all country and city arrays. Yes i know , i should be using      multidimensional arrays but for now , im just testing the code with a few arrays before i fill up all the arrays.

 

The problem :

When i use

$fullcityname = "$$citiesarray[$cityshortkey]"; the array elements are displayed as $i,$i,$i

but if i use the cities array name directly it will display fine,

$fullcityname = "$japan_cities[$cityshortkey]"; will display fine

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tcountryarrays.php contains arrays for all cities, just like the one below.

$japan_cities=array(
'tokyo'=>'Tokyo',
'okinawa'=>'Okinawa');

 

<?php

require '../countryarrays.php';
require '../dbconnect.php';
$country = $_GET['country'];   												//Passed on from an ajax call
$citiesarray = $country.'_cities';											//Ex: For japan the $citiesarray would become 'japan_cities'
$array_totalpics = array();													//Array to hold values as the total pics of each japan city
$array_citykey = array();													//Array to hold values of each city's keyname(New York is newyork). 
$combined=array();															//Full names and keys are assigned in countryarrays.php which is call
foreach ($$citiesarray as $citykeyname=>$fullcityname)
{
 mysql_select_db($gallerydb,$link);										//SELECT DB $GALLERYDB
 $citytable = $citykeyname.'_gallery';									//Because all tables in the db are in the format city_gallery)
 $totalpicsquery = mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $citytable");		//QUERY TO GET THE TOTAL PICS
 list($totalpics) = mysql_fetch_row($totalpicsquery);					//FUNCTION TO ASSIGN NUMBER OF PICS TO $totalpics

 array_push($array_totalpics,"$totalpics");								//Push each value of totalpics into the array
 array_push($array_citykey,"$citykeyname");								//Push each value of cityshort into the array

																		//The reason i created a new array for the totalpics and citykeyname was
																		//to get an array in format (citykeyname => totalpics), but that wasnt possible
																		//for associative arrays with array_push. Both these arrays get combined below
}
$combined = array_combine($array_citykey,$array_totalpics);				//Combined array
arsort($combined);													    //Sort the array based on total pics from highest to lowest
$sliced_combined = array_slice($combined,0,20);						   //Display only a max of 20 cities
print "<br><br>";
foreach($sliced_combined as $cityshortkey=>$pics)						
{
$fullcityname = "$$citiesarray[$cityshortkey]";							//The key is used to get the array Full city name value from the 
			  															//list of cities array in countryarrays.php. Ex: japan_cities[tokyo] will output 'Tokyo'

print "<a href=\"\" title=\"$fullcityname\">$fullcityname ($pics)</a><br>";
}


?>

 

 

Thanks in advance, and any suggestions on how to improve my code is appreciated

 

[Garethp]

I think what's happening is that it's setting the variable name to $citiesarray[$cityshortkey], rather than $citiesarray; So try

 

$Temp = $$citiesarray;
$fullcityname = $Temp[$cityshortkey];

 

Or something like that

[Slips]

lol, damn i tried everything except that, but thanks a lot , that saved me a lot of time!