Array chunk and pad in PHP - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Array chunk and pad

📖 Scenario: You are organizing a list of guests for a dinner party. You want to split the guests into tables with a fixed number of seats. If a table has fewer guests than seats, you want to fill the empty seats with the word "Empty".

🎯 Goal: Create a PHP program that splits an array of guest names into smaller arrays (tables) of a fixed size. If a table has fewer guests than the fixed size, fill the remaining seats with "Empty".

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called guests with exactly these names: 'Anna', 'Ben', 'Cara', 'David', 'Eva', 'Frank', 'Grace'

Create a variable called tableSize and set it to 3

Use array_chunk with the $preserve_keys parameter set to false to split guests into chunks of size tableSize

Use array_pad to fill any chunk smaller than tableSize with the string 'Empty'

Print the final array of tables

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Organizing guests into tables for events or dinners where each table has a fixed number of seats.

💼 Career

Helps in understanding how to manipulate arrays for grouping data and filling missing values, useful in data processing and UI display tasks.

1

Create the guests array

Create an array called guests with these exact names: 'Anna', 'Ben', 'Cara', 'David', 'Eva', 'Frank', 'Grace'.

PHP

# Create the array called guests with the given names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create the array and separate names with commas.

2

Set the table size

Create a variable called tableSize and set it to 3.

PHP

<?php
$guests = ['Anna', 'Ben', 'Cara', 'David', 'Eva', 'Frank', 'Grace'];
# Create the variable tableSize and set it to 3
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the = sign to assign the value 3 to $tableSize.

3

Split guests into tables and pad

Use array_chunk with the $preserve_keys parameter set to false to split $guests into chunks of size $tableSize. Then, use a foreach loop with variables $index and $table to iterate over the chunks. Inside the loop, use array_pad to fill any chunk smaller than $tableSize with the string 'Empty'. Store the padded tables in a new array called paddedTables.

PHP

<?php
$guests = ['Anna', 'Ben', 'Cara', 'David', 'Eva', 'Frank', 'Grace'];
$tableSize = 3;
# Split guests into chunks of size tableSize without preserving keys
$tables = array_chunk($guests, $tableSize, false);
# Create an empty array paddedTables
$paddedTables = [];
# Use foreach with index and table to pad each chunk to tableSize with 'Empty'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use array_chunk to split the array, then loop over each chunk and use array_pad to add 'Empty' if needed.

4

Print the padded tables

Print the array paddedTables using print_r to display the final tables with padding.

PHP

 $table) {
    $paddedTables[$index] = array_pad($table, $tableSize, 'Empty');
}
# Print the paddedTables array
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print_r($paddedTables); to show the array structure.