PHP: Get the index inside a foreach loop.

In the past, I’ve noticed that a lot of PHP beginners tend to struggle with the foreach loop. In some cases, it is because they have arrived from a language that only supports while loops and for loops.

Here is a basic example of a foreach loop:

<?php

foreach($array as $item){
    echo $item, '<br>';
}

In the loop above, I am simply printing out each item in $array.

However – What if you need to get the key / index of the item that you are currently iterating over? Well, there’s a slight modification that we can make:

<?php

foreach($array as $key => $item){
    echo $key . ":" . $item . "<br>";
}

The variable $key will contain the key / index of the current item inside the foreach loop. It’s that simple!