Multidimensional arrays in PHP - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Working with Multidimensional Arrays in PHP

📖 Scenario: You are managing a small library system. You want to store information about books, including their title, author, and year published. This information will be stored in a multidimensional array.

🎯 Goal: Create a multidimensional array to hold book information, add a new book, retrieve specific book details, and display the list of books.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a multidimensional array called library with three books, each book having keys title, author, and year.

Add a new book to the library array.

Use a foreach loop to iterate over the library array and access each book's details.

Print the details of each book in a readable format.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Multidimensional arrays are useful to store and organize complex data like records, tables, or objects in many applications such as libraries, inventories, or user profiles.

💼 Career

Understanding multidimensional arrays is essential for backend developers, data analysts, and anyone working with structured data in PHP or similar languages.

1

Create the initial multidimensional array

Create a multidimensional array called library with these exact three books:
[ 'title' => '1984', 'author' => 'George Orwell', 'year' => 1949 ],
[ 'title' => 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author' => 'Harper Lee', 'year' => 1960 ],
[ 'title' => 'The Great Gatsby', 'author' => 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year' => 1925 ].

PHP

# Create the multidimensional array called library
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to use an array of arrays, where each inner array holds keys 'title', 'author', and 'year'.

2

Add a new book to the library

Add a new book to the library array with these details:
'title' => 'Pride and Prejudice', 'author' => 'Jane Austen', 'year' => 1813.

PHP

 '1984', 'author' => 'George Orwell', 'year' => 1949 ],
    [ 'title' => 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author' => 'Harper Lee', 'year' => 1960 ],
    [ 'title' => 'The Great Gatsby', 'author' => 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year' => 1925 ]
];

# Add the new book to the library array
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the array append syntax $library[] = to add the new book.

3

Loop through the library to access book details

Use a foreach loop with variables $book to iterate over the $library array and access each book's details.

PHP

 '1984', 'author' => 'George Orwell', 'year' => 1949 ],
    [ 'title' => 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author' => 'Harper Lee', 'year' => 1960 ],
    [ 'title' => 'The Great Gatsby', 'author' => 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year' => 1925 ]
];

$library[] = [ 'title' => 'Pride and Prejudice', 'author' => 'Jane Austen', 'year' => 1813 ];

# Use a foreach loop to access each book's details
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use foreach ($library as $book) to loop through each book array.

4

Print the details of each book

Inside the foreach loop, print each book's title, author, and year in this format:
Title: [title], Author: [author], Year: [year].
Use echo to display the output.

PHP

 '1984', 'author' => 'George Orwell', 'year' => 1949 ],
    [ 'title' => 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author' => 'Harper Lee', 'year' => 1960 ],
    [ 'title' => 'The Great Gatsby', 'author' => 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year' => 1925 ]
];

$library[] = [ 'title' => 'Pride and Prejudice', 'author' => 'Jane Austen', 'year' => 1813 ];

foreach ($library as $book) {
    # Print the book details here
    # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use echo with double quotes and curly braces to insert array values inside the string.