How to find the foreach index?

foreach($array as $key=>$value) {
    // do stuff
}

$key is the index of each $array element

You can put a hack in your foreach, such as a field incremented on each run-through, which is exactly what the for loop gives you in a numerically-indexed array. Such a field would be a pseudo-index that needs manual management (increments, etc).

A foreach will give you your index in the form of your $key value, so such a hack shouldn't be necessary.

e.g., in a foreach

$index = 0;
foreach($data as $key=>$val) {
    // Use $key as an index, or...

    // ... manage the index this way..
    echo "Index is $index\n";
    $index++;
}

Owen has a good answer. If you want just the key, and you are working with an array this might also be useful.

foreach(array_keys($array) as $key) {
//  do stuff
}

You can create $i outside the loop and do $i++ at the bottom of the loop.

These two loops are equivalent (bar the safety railings of course):

for ($i=0; $i<count($things); $i++) { ... }

foreach ($things as $i=>$thing) { ... }

eg

for ($i=0; $i<count($things); $i++) {
    echo "Thing ".$i." is ".$things[$i];
}

foreach ($things as $i=>$thing) {
    echo "Thing ".$i." is ".$thing;
}

PHP arrays have internal pointers, so try this:

foreach($array as $key => $value){
   $index = current($array);
}

Works okay for me (only very preliminarily tested though).

Jonathan is correct. PHP arrays act as a map table mapping keys to values. in some cases you can get an index if your array is defined, such as

$var = array(2,5);

for ($i = 0; $i < count($var); $i++) {
    echo $var[$i]."\n";
}

your output will be

2
5

in which case each element in the array has a knowable index, but if you then do something like the following

$var = array_push($var,10);

for ($i = 0; $i < count($var); $i++) {
    echo $var[$i]."\n";
}

you get no output. This happens because arrays in PHP are not linear structures like they are in most languages. They are more like hash tables that may or may not have keys for all stored values. Hence foreach doesn't use indexes to crawl over them because they only have an index if the array is defined. If you need to have an index, make sure your arrays are fully defined before crawling over them, and use a for loop.

I use ++$key instead of $key++ to start from 1. Normally it starts from 0.

@foreach ($quiz->questions as $key => $question)
 <h2> Question: {{++$key}}</h2>
 <p>{{$question->question}}</p>
@endforeach

Output:

Question: 1
......
Question:2
.....
.
.
.

I solved this way, when I had to use the foreach index and value in the same context:

$array = array('a', 'b', 'c');
foreach ($array as $letter=>$index) {

  echo $letter; //Here $letter content is the actual index
  echo $array[$letter]; // echoes the array value

}//foreach

I would like to add this, I used this in laravel to just index my table:

• With $loop->index
• I also preincrement it with ++$loop to start at 1

My Code:

@foreach($resultsPerCountry->first()->studies as $result)
  <tr>
    <td>{{ ++$loop->index}}</td>                                    
  </tr>
@endforeach