php - Create an associative array from a string

Question

got a collection of objects which have an item called path, which has a kind of folding set by a string like: $path = '/some/sub/any/path/'

now I need to create an array from that string like:

array(
    'some'=>array(
        'sub'=>array(
            'objects'=>array(
                array('id'=>1),
                array('id'=>4)
            ),
            'any'=>array(
                'path'=>array(
                    'objects'=>array(
                        array('id'=>2),
                        array('id'=>3)
                    )
                )
            )
        )
    )
);

Actually I am looking for the best practice.

Any Idea, how to solve this in PHP?

Answer 1

How about this? The function adds your custom path to the resulting tree and assigns custom value there. Also returns reference to the created node in case you need to modify it later.

function &add_path(&$tree, $path, $value = NULL) {

    if (!is_array($path))
        $path = explode('/', $path);

    $node =& $tree;
    foreach ($path as $step)
        $node =& $node[$step];

    $node = $value;
    return $node;
}

// test
$tree = array();

$c =& add_path($tree, 'a/b/c', 'c');
$c = 'cc';

$d = add_path($tree, 'a/b/d', 'd');
$y = add_path($tree, 'x/y', 'y');

var_dump($tree);
var_dump($c);
var_dump($d);
var_dump($y);