PHP How to determine the first and last iteration in a foreach loop?

You could use a counter:

$i = 0;
$len = count($array);
foreach ($array as $item) {
    if ($i == 0) {
        // first
    } else if ($i == $len - 1) {
        // last
    }
    // …
    $i++;
}

A more simplified version of the above and presuming you're not using custom indexes...

$len = count($array);
foreach ($array as $index => $item) {
    if ($index == 0) {
        // first
    } else if ($index == $len - 1) {
        // last
    }
}

Version 2 - Because I have come to loathe using the else unless necessary.

$len = count($array);
foreach ($array as $index => $item) {
    if ($index == 0) {
        // first
        // do something
        continue;
    }

    if ($index == $len - 1) {
        // last
        // do something
        continue;
    }
}

You could remove the first and last elements off the array and process them separately.

Like this:

<?php
$array = something();
$first = array_shift($array);
$last = array_pop($array);

// do something with $first
foreach ($array as $item) {
 // do something with $item
}
// do something with $last
?>

Removing all the formatting to CSS instead of inline tags would improve your code and speed up load time.

You could also avoid mixing HTML with php logic whenever possible.

Your page could be made a lot more readable and maintainable by separating things like this:

<?php
function create_menu($params) {
  //retrieve menu items 
  //get collection 
  $collection = get('xxcollection') ;
  foreach($collection as $c) show_collection($c);
}

function show_subcat($val) {
  ?>
    <div class="sub_node" style="display:none">
      <img src="../images/dtree/join.gif" align="absmiddle" style="padding-left:2px;" />
      <a id="'.$val['xsubcatid'].'" href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="getProduct(this , event)" class="sub_node_links"  >
        <?php echo $val['xsubcatname']; ?>
      </a>
    </div>
  <?php
}

function show_cat($item) {
  ?>
    <div class="node" >
      <img src="../images/dtree/plus.gif" align="absmiddle" class="node_item" id="plus" />
      <img src="../images/dtree/folder.gif" align="absmiddle" id="folder">
      <?php echo $item['xcatname']; ?>
      <?php 
        $subcat = get_where('xxsubcategory' , array('xcatid'=>$item['xcatid'])) ;
        foreach($subcat as $val) show_subcat($val);
      ?>
    </div>
  <?php
}

function show_collection($c) {
  ?>
    <div class="parent" style="direction:rtl">
      <img src="../images/dtree/minus.gif" align="absmiddle" class="parent_item" id="minus" />
      <img src="../images/dtree/base.gif" align="absmiddle" id="base">
      <?php echo $c['xcollectionname']; ?>
      <?php
        //get categories 
        $cat = get_where('xxcategory' , array('xcollectionid'=>$c['xcollectionid']));
        foreach($cat as $item) show_cat($item);
      ?>
    </div>
  <?php
}
?>

1: Why not use a simple for statement? Assuming you're using a real array and not an Iterator you could easily check whether the counter variable is 0 or one less than the whole number of elements. In my opinion this is the most clean and understandable solution...

$array = array( ... );

$count = count( $array );

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

    $current = $array[ $i ];

    if ( $i == 0 )
    {

        // process first element

    }

    if ( $i == $count - 1 )
    {

        // process last element

    }

}

2: You should consider using Nested Sets to store your tree structure. Additionally you can improve the whole thing by using recursive functions.

Using reset($array) and end($array)

<?php

    $arrays = [1,2,3,4,5];

    $first  = reset($arrays);
    $last   = end($arrays);    

    foreach( $arrays as $array )
    {

        if ( $first == $array )
        {
            echo "<li>{$array} first</li>";
        }
        else if ( $last == $array )
        {
            echo "<li>{$array} last</li>";
        }
        else
        {
            echo "<li>{$array}</li>";
        }                

    }

Demo repl.it

You can use the counter and array length.

    $array = array(1,2,3,4);

    $i = 0;
    $len = count($array);
    foreach ($array as $item) {
        if ($i === 0) {
            // first
        } else if ($i === $len - 1) {
            // last
        }
        // …
        $i++;
    }

foreach ($arquivos as $key => $item) {
   reset($arquivos);
   // FIRST AHEAD
   if ($key === key($arquivos) || $key !== end(array_keys($arquivos)))
       $pdf->cat(null, null, $key);

   // LAST
   if ($key === end(array_keys($arquivos))) {
       $pdf->cat(null, null, $key)
           ->execute();
   }
}

The simplest way would be

$array = [9,5,6,4,7,8];

$current_iteration = 0;

foreach($array as $item){
  if( 0 === $current_iteration ){
    echo 'this is the first item: ' . $item;
  }

  if( (count($array) - 1) === $current_iteration){
    echo 'this is the last item: ' . $item;
  }

  $current_iteration++;
}