What are some best practices for handling unlimited levels of subcategories in PHP?

When dealing with unlimited levels of subcategories in PHP, a common approach is to use recursive functions to handle the nesting of subcategories. By recursively iterating through each level of subcategories, you can effectively manage an unlimited number of levels without the need to hardcode a specific depth limit. 

function printCategories($categories, $depth = 0) {
    foreach ($categories as $category) {
        echo str_repeat('-', $depth) . $category['name'] . "\n";
        if (!empty($category['subcategories'])) {
            printCategories($category['subcategories'], $depth + 1);
        }
    }
}

// Example usage
$categories = [
    [
        'name' => 'Category 1',
        'subcategories' => [
            [
                'name' => 'Subcategory 1.1',
                'subcategories' => [
                    ['name' => 'Subcategory 1.1.1'],
                    ['name' => 'Subcategory 1.1.2']
                ]
            ],
            ['name' => 'Subcategory 1.2']
        ]
    ],
    ['name' => 'Category 2']
];

printCategories($categories);

Keywords

recursion array database hierarchical data nested set model

Related Questions