snippet pass array to another snippet

108 Posts

lukemcd Reply #1, 14 years, 8 months ago

I have a snippet which serves to hold a PHP array that gets passed to other snippets. Lets call it "baseArray":

$category_array = array(
	"acupuncture" => "Acupuncture",
	"advertising" => "Advertising",
	"apparel" => "Apparel",
);

return $category_array;

I would like to enable another snippet to take the array and process it as a PHP array. But when I try something like this it fails:

$category_array = $modx->runSnippet('baseArray');
foreach($category_array as $category_id => $category_name) {
	$output .= '<li>' . $category_name . '</li>';
}
return $output;

The above snippet does not return anything. It is receiving some sort of object from the first snippet but it does not appear to be a straight PHP array.

Any help greatly appreciated.

MODX Staff
10,725 Posts

opengeek Reply #2, 14 years, 8 months ago

Snippets return strings in MODX, never anything else. If you want to use other types of data like this, you can set the variable (array, object, whatever) as a placeholder in one Snippet and access it by key from another that is processed after the placeholder is set.

Jason Coward
Chief Architect @ MODX
http://www.jasoncoward.com | http://twitter.com/drumshaman | https://github.com/opengeek

108 Posts

lukemcd Reply #3, 14 years, 8 months ago

Thanks! That makes sense. I haven't used placeholders in snippets before so I will read up on that.

In the meantime I was able to work it using JSON encoding. So the first snippet becomes:

$category_array = array(
    "acupuncture" => "Acupuncture",
    "advertising" => "Advertising",
    "apparel" => "Apparel",
);
 
return json_encode($category_array);

And the second snippet becomes:

$category_array = $modx->runSnippet('baseArray');
$category_array = json_decode($category_array,true);
foreach($category_array as $category_id => $category_name) {
    $output .= '<li>' . $category_name . '</li>';
}
return $output;

Works great!

5,888 Posts

Bruno17 Reply #4, 14 years, 8 months ago

you can also return a Json-string:

$category_array = array(
    "acupuncture" => "Acupuncture",
    "advertising" => "Advertising",
    "apparel" => "Apparel",
);
 
return $modx->toJson($category_array);

$category_array = $modx->runSnippet('baseArray');
$category_array = $modx->fromJson($category_array);
foreach($category_array as $category_id => $category_name) {
    $output .= '<li>' . $category_name . '</li>';
}
return $output;

-------------------------------

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Thanks!

108 Posts

lukemcd Reply #5, 14 years, 8 months ago

Looks like we both had the same idea Bruno17 but I didn't know about the MODX Json syntax. Much cleaner!