PHP: elements with and without explicit keys in the same array

Question

I’m trying to figure out a better or cleaner way to do something like this in PHP:

// Isto será passado como argumento de uma função...
$params = array('Nome', 'Idade', 'Mail' => '[email protected]');

"Name" and "Age" are values with automatically assigned keys (0 and 1, for example), and "Mail" is a key with the value "[email protected]":

[0] => 'Nome',
[1] => 'Idade',
['Mail'] => '[email protected]'

When I run this through a "foreach" loop, I’m doing this to have "Name" and "Age" as the actual parameters:

foreach ($params as $k => $i) {

    // Esta é a parte "feia"!
    if (is_int($k)) {
        $k = $i;
        $i = false;
    }

    // Para fazer algo assim, por exemplo...
    $out = "";
    if ($i) {
        $out .= "<p><a href=\"mailto:$i\">$k</a></p>\n";
    } else {
        $out .= "<p>$k<p>\n";
    }

}

What will return something like this:

<p>Name</p>
<p>Age</p>
<p><a href="mailto:[email protected]">Mail</a></p>

The question is: is there a clear way for PHP to differentiate the elements of the same array that have an explicit key (Mail => [email protected]) from those that do not (Name and Age)?

Observing: the above code was divided into two steps to better understand the current solution, which is to differentiate the value of the key by testing whether it is an integer, but the code I’m actually using is:

$o = "";
foreach ($params as $k => $i) {
    if (!is_int($k)) {
        $o .= "<p><a href=\"$i\">$k</a></p>\n";
    } else {
        $o .= "<p>$i</p>\n";
    }
}

Answer 1

It would appear that the answer to the original question is indeed nay, there is no PHP way to differentiate elements with and without keys within the same array.

But, the original problem stemmed from the need to create a readable function where the amount of arguments passed could vary, hence the initial option for an array, which would allow such a call:

add_table_row(['Nome', 'Idade', 'Mail' => '[email protected]']);

or so...

add_table_row(array('Nome', 'Idade', 'Mail' => '[email protected]'));

However, as I just discovered, there is a way to pass a variable amount of arguments to a function, using the function "func_get_args()", and the function call can become even more readable:

// PHP >= 5.4
add_table_row('Nome', 'Idade', ['Mail' => '[email protected]']);

or

add_table_row('Nome', 'Idade', array('Mail' => '[email protected]'));

So an example of the full code of the function would be something like this:

function add_table_row() {
    $args = func_get_args(); // retorna uma array de argumentos...
    $o = "<tr>\n";
    foreach ($args as $value) {
        if (is_array($value)) {       // Se o argumento é uma array...
            $cont = key($value);      // O dado da célula é a chave...
            $param = current($value); // E o parâmetro da tag é o valor...
            $o .= "<td $param>$cont</td>\n";
        } else {
            $o .= "<td>$value</td>\n";
        }
    }
    $o .= "</tr>\n";
    return $o;
}

I hope this will be useful to someone else.

Answer 2

Since you will create a function for this, you can pass as string and find the elements markers... Just explode in , and if there is : the function will understand that is an array.

add_table_row('Nome,Idade,Mail:[email protected]')

    function add_table_row( $string )
    {
        $string = explode( ',' , $string );

        foreach( $string as $line )
        {
            if( strpos( $line , ':' ) && $elementos = explode( ':' , $line ) )
            {
                echo $elementos[0] . ', ' . $elementos[1];
            }
            else
            {
                echo $line;
            }
        }
    }

output
_{Name
Age
Mail, [email protected]}