My while loop is decrementing by two and I cannot find the cause.
I feel that I do not understand how PHP is interacting with the HTML.
Any words of clarity? (Note the index of the dictionaries start at 1)
if (isset($title)) {
$i = sizeof($title);
while ($i > 0) {
$idnum = intostring($i);
$titletoadd = $title[$idnum];
$summarytoadd = $summary[$idnum];
$podcastblock =<<<EOD
<div class="podcast" id="podcast$idnum">
<p class="podcasttitle" id="podcasttitle$idnum">$titletoadd</p>
<div class="container column horizontal-spaced ">
<p class="podcastnumber left shrink " id="podcastnumber$idnum">$i</p>
<p class="summary grow" id="summary$idnum">$summarytoadd</p>
</div>
<audio class="audioplayer tile displaymiddle wide" id='audioplayer$idnum" controls>
<source src="audiofiles/p$i.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
EOD;
echo $podcastblock;
$i--;
}
first of, remove this particular code $idnum = intostring($i); you dont need this. Change it to $idnum = $i;
It is not really decrementing by two, if you try to fill your $title array with 10 or more elements. In this way you can observe what's happening
Here are your mistakes:
$title = array("title1", "title2");
/* The array starts from 0 index then 1, 2 and so on
once you get the size of the array it
just counts the elements in the array
but not really knowing the last index */
$i = sizeof($title);
/* in this case our $i have now the value of 2
$title[2] does not exists because we only have two elements
namely $title[0] and $title[1]... this is your first mistake */
// second mistake:
while ($i > 0)
/* our array starts from zero, with this condition,
you're basically skipping zero index (beginning of the array) */
// to fix these you need to put the following codes
$i = (count($title) - 1); /* use count instead of sizeof but they are completely the same...
subtract 1 to the total count to get the last index of the array */
while ($i >= 0) // lastly include the 0 index
Hope this helps.
You have a typo on this line:
<audio class="audioplayer tile displaymiddle wide" id='audioplayer$idnum" controls>
You're starting the id attribute value with a single quote, bit ending it with a double quote. As a result, everything until the next <audio element is being used as part of the id, not as separate HTML elements. So you only see every other DIV.
Change to:
<audio class="audioplayer tile displaymiddle wide" id="audioplayer$idnum" controls>
There is nothing in this code that would cause your $i to be decremented by 2. If there is an extra decrement happening, it would have to be in your intostring() method.
However, there are a few other issues happening here. You have a rogue single quote in your html and it's missing the closing div tag. I can make a few suggestions to clean this up a bit.
For blocks of HTML wrapped in PHP, it's easier to understand how PHP interacts with the HTML if you start and end your PHP string with a single quote, use all Double quotes inside the HTML elements, and explicitly inject the PHP variables using string concatenation like: '. $variable .'
You don't have to cast the $i to a string, PHP will handle that for you.
I think a for loop is a little cleaner in this situation and it makes the intention of the code more clear.
Try this:
$title = array("Title1","Title2","Title3");
$summary = array("Summary1","Summary2","Summary3");
if (isset($title)) {
for ($i= count($title); $i > 0; $i--) {
$titletoadd = $title[$i];
$summarytoadd = $summary[$i];
$podcastblock = '
<div class="podcast" id="podcast'. $i .'">
<p class="podcasttitle" id="podcasttitle'. $i .'">'. $titletoadd .'</p>
<div class="container column horizontal-spaced ">
<p class="podcastnumber left shrink " id="podcastnumber'. $i .'">'. $i .'</p>
<p class="summary grow" id="summary'. $i .'">'. $summarytoadd .'</p>
</div>
<audio class="audioplayer tile displaymiddle wide" id="audioplayer'. $i .'" controls>
<source src="audiofiles/p'. $i .'mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
</div>';
echo $podcastblock;
}
}