What is Associative arrays in PHP Or Key Paired array in PHP ?
Associative arrays in PHP are arrays that use strings as index assign by you .This stores element values in association with key values rather than in a conventional linear index order.Associative array will have their index as string so that you can establish a strong association between key and values. Associative arrays used like a structure by specify string key instread of numeric index.
eg. \’Key\’ =>\’value\’ , where \’=>\’ is key value operator
There are two ways to create an associative array:
- $population = array(\”India\”=>\”100\”, \”China\”=>\”120\”, \”USA\”=>\”90\”);
- $population [\’India\’] = \”100\”; $population [\’Ben\’] = \”120\”; $population [\’USA\’] = \”90\”;
In both the condition we are storing the value with respect to country in $population array. You can use any one of them as required .
Note: In Associative arrays index would not work in place of string key.it means $population[1] will not provide any result.
How to Use Associative arrays ?
As we seen above how to create or store value in associative array, now if we want to use array we have to use foreach loop to fetch values from array .
like for an example
foreach($population as $key=>$value)
{
echo\"$key =$value </br>\"
}
Working with associative array can also be done with Stack implementation , With the using of stack in array you can add or delete element in array.