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PHP PHP Arrays and Control Structures PHP Arrays Multidimensional Arrays

Christopher Morriss
Christopher Morriss
13,447 Points
Posted by Christopher Morriss
Christopher Morriss
13,447 Points

PHP Parse Error / You cannot output an associative array directly within a string - How do I fix this?

I am stuck on Challenge Task 3 of 3 (Replace the hard coded values in the output with the name and email values from the contacts array) of the Multidimensional Arrays coding task and I am not sure what I have done wrong.

When I put single quotes around the string 'name', I receive the 'You cannot output an associative array directly within a string' error and when I put double quotes around 'name', I receive a PHP Parse Error stating that ',' or ';' was expected instead of name.

What am I doing wrong here? Have I missed out an important piece of code?

index.php 
<?php
//edit this array
$contacts = array( array('name' => 'Alena Holligan',
                         'email' => 'alena.holligan@teamtreehouse.com'), 
                   array('name' => 'Dave McFarland',
                         'email' => 'dave.mcfarland@teamtreehouse.com'), 
                   array('name' => 'Treasure Porth',
                         'email' => 'treasure.porth@teamtreehouse.com'),
                   array('name' => 'Andrew Chalkley',
                         'email' => 'andrew.chalkley@teamtreehouse.com'));

echo "<ul>\n";
//$contacts[0] will return 'Alena Holligan' in our simple array of names.
echo "<li>$contacts[0]['name'] : $contacts[0]['email']</li>\n";
echo "<li>$contacts[1]['name'] : $contacts[1]['email']</li>\n";
echo "<li>$contacts[2]['name'] : $contacts[2]['email']</li>\n";
echo "<li>$contacts[3]['name'] : $contacts[3]['email']</li>\n";
echo "</ul>\n";

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,261 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,261 Points

The "string" the error is talking about is the entire echo message content. You need to incorporate the new data in a different way. For example:

<?php
// instead of this:
echo "<li>$contacts[0]['name'] : $contacts[0]['email']</li>\n";
// you could create template string substitution tokens using braces:
echo "<li>{$contacts[0]['name']} : {$contacts[0]['email']}</li>\n";
// or you could build the string using concatenation:
echo "<li>" . $contacts[0]['name'] . " : " . $contacts[0]['email'] . "</li>\n";