Re: recursion question

"Robert J. Cissell" wrote: > > I'm trying to write my first recursive function but I'm not doing too well. I have a > mysql database with the fields of topic_id, topic_name, and parent_topic_id. If I have a topic_id > with a parent_topic_if of 5, I want the function to get the topic_name and parent_topic_id for 5, > and again and again until it reaches a parent_topic_id of 0, which would be my top level. As it > goes, it would store these values in an array which I can run through later to build a path from the > top to whatever topic_id i started out at. What I can't figure is how to set up the recursive > function to do so. I have no problem with the database stuff, but I need help with the function > stuff. Any ideas or suggestions are greatly appreciated. > > Robert Cissell Hmm, untested idea: function getAttributes(id, &$name, $parent_id) { // code to get info for topic id from database and return // values in 'name' and 'parent_id' } function getTopics(&$list, $id) { if ($id == 0) return; getAttributes($id, $name, $parent); $list[] = array($name, $parent); // arrange as you wish return getTopics($list, $parent); } $list = array(); getTopics($list, $id_of_interest);