Forum Moderators: coopster
As I'm sure you can see from my code below, I'm an array newbie. What I'm trying to do is compute the nearest distance of two zip codes. If I were just matching two zip codes, this would be no problem, but I need to compare the customer's zip code against a list of merchant zip codes stored in the database.
My idea was that during the loop, I could calculate the zip code distance, stuff it into a new array, then sort for the lowest value. But, because I have so little experience with arrays, this is proving to be very difficult for me.
Here's the part of the code where I'm lost:
$findLocations = mysql_query("SELECT latitude, longitude FROM locations");
while ($loop_findLocations = mysql_fetch_array($findLocations)) {
$latitude = $loop_findLocations["latitude"];
$longitude = $loop_findLocations["longitude"];
$yarddistance = distance($latitude, $longitude, $cutomerlat, $cutomerlong, "m");
$nearest_distance = array($yarddistance);
sort($nearest_distance);
print_r($nearest_distance); // print array to see what's happening
}
echo '<br> Best Yard:'. $nearest_distance;
The current output of the script is this:
Array ( [0] => 1956.0688881835 ) Array ( [0] => 1998.9853287785 ) Array ( [0] => 1839.565611694 ) Array ( [0] => 1900.3659881069 ) Array ( [0] => 59.368599722285 ) Array ( [0] => 197.68427334405 )
Best Yard:Array
Besides not understanding the basics of arrays, something I'm trying to correct, where am I going wrong?
thank you.
[example]
$nearest_distance = array();
$findLocations = mysql_query("SELECT latitude, longitude FROM locations");
while ($loop_findLocations = mysql_fetch_array($findLocations)) {
$latitude = $loop_findLocations["latitude"];
$longitude = $loop_findLocations["longitude"];
$yarddistance = distance($latitude, $longitude, $cutomerlat, $cutomerlong, "m");
$nearest_distance[] = $yarddistance;
}
sort($nearest_distance);
print_r($nearest_distance); // print array
echo '<br> Best Yard:'. $nearest_distance[0];
[/example]
Without testing, that should print the first element from the array after it is sorted (which should be the lowest number).
I've removed the sort and print_r out of the loop, as you want to do your sorting after the array is populated with data.
Hope this helps :)
