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Re: comparing arrays [message #181042 is a reply to message #181035]

Sun, 07 April 2013 13:37

Thomas 'PointedEars'
Messages: 701
Registered: October 2010

Karma:

Senior Member

bill wrote:

> I need to see if a patient has appointments with a
> psychotherapist and a physician on the same day.
>
> I request the schedule of each therapist and each physician as
> arrays of arrays:
> time, patient_number, duration (note, the therapist/physician id
> is not in the array)
> They are non-associative arrays (numeric keys)
> I might have 1..n physicians and 1..n therapists
> I can generate arrays of physicians and arrays of therapists
>
> Option 1 is a nightmare of nested foreachs
>
> I am sure there must be an array function that will permit this
> check.

I am quite sure there isn't.

> AFAIK, the _intersect functions require the same date in
> all, when what I want is "any".
>
> my current thought is to create arrays of just pt_number, merge
> the physician arrays, merge the therapist arrays, array_flip to
> move the values to keys and then array_intersect.

A merge will destroy the association between patient, date, and doctor.

> But, before I try that I welcome any suggestions.

You should probably do this in a relational database. But if you
absolutely must do it in PHP, you can determine what the keys of your data
are, and in which order you need them: the patient, the date, or the doctor.

Then you can build from the records a “multi-dimensional array” (for lack of
a better word) from which becomes apparent where there are schedule
collisions. You can take advantage of the fact that PHP builds “multi-
dimensional arrays” automatically if you add another index expression.

For example, in a loop,

$appointments[$patient_id][$date] = $doctor;

would store the information that the patient with ID $patient_id has an
appointment with $doctor on $date. Obviously it is very easy then to
organize the data by different primary keys in different “multi-dimensional
arrays” (which themselves may be elements of yet another array, to avoid
extra variables). If an element of an array with an index already exists,
there is the collision.

HTH

PointedEars
--
Sometimes, what you learn is wrong. If those wrong ideas are close to the
root of the knowledge tree you build on a particular subject, pruning the
bad branches can sometimes cause the whole tree to collapse.
-- Mike Duffy in cljs, <news:Xns9FB6521286DB8invalidcom(at)94(dot)75(dot)214(dot)39>

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[Message index]

		comparing arrays By: bill on Sun, 07 April 2013 11:34
		Re: comparing arrays By: Jerry Stuckle on Sun, 07 April 2013 12:34
		Re: comparing arrays By: bill on Sun, 07 April 2013 14:00
		Re: comparing arrays By: Frank Steinmetzger on Sun, 07 April 2013 14:14
		Re: comparing arrays By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Sun, 07 April 2013 15:13
		Re: comparing arrays By: bill on Sun, 07 April 2013 15:34
		Re: comparing arrays By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Sun, 07 April 2013 19:33
		Re: comparing arrays By: Jerry Stuckle on Sun, 07 April 2013 18:18
		Re: comparing arrays By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Sun, 07 April 2013 13:37
		Re: comparing arrays By: bill on Sun, 07 April 2013 13:59
		Re: comparing arrays By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Sun, 07 April 2013 15:14
		Re: comparing arrays By: The Natural Philosoph on Sun, 07 April 2013 14:59
		Re: comparing arrays By: The Natural Philosoph on Sun, 07 April 2013 15:01
		Re: comparing arrays By: Frank Steinmetzger on Sun, 07 April 2013 18:22

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