PHP Mapping for Dictionaries

A Slice dictionary maps to a native PHP associative array. The PHP mapping does not currently support all Slice dictionary types, however, because native PHP associative arrays support only integers and strings as keys.

A Slice dictionary whose key type is an enumeration or one of the primitive types boolean, byte, short, int, or long is mapped as an associative array with an integer key.

Boolean values are treated as integers, with false equivalent to 0 (zero) and true equivalent to 1 (one).

A Slice dictionary with a string key type is mapped as an associative array with a string key. All other key types cause a warning to be generated.

Here is the definition of our EmployeeMap:

Slice

dictionary<long, Employee> EmployeeMap;

You can create an instance of this dictionary as shown below:

PHP

$e1 = new Employee;
$e1->number = 42;
$e1->firstName = "Stan";
$e1->lastName = "Lipmann";

$e2 = new Employee;
$e2->number = 77;
$e2->firstName = "Herb";
$e2->lastName = "Sutter";

$em = array($e1->number => $e1, $e2->number => $e2);

The Ice run time validates the elements of a dictionary to ensure that they are compatible with the declared type; InvalidArgumentException exception is raised if an incompatible type is encountered.

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