Dynamic Variables in PHP

say you have 10 group names, labeled ‘$group_1’, ‘$group_2’, etc. and you want to display each of them. a quick way to do that is to use dynamic variables (aka variable variables)

that’s a super simple implementation. i needed to use it for a recent project — it was pretty intense to figure out the logic, but this is what i came up with

i needed to add some custom post meta fields to the wordpress admin for 13 groups (simplified, adding a WIZZY editor for the editor to add bios for each group), but didn’t want to write 13 versions of pretty much the same code, save for a incrementing variable in the name

one of the toughest parts to wrap my head around in the beginning was the $$group_bio variable. take it one line at a time:

$group_bio = 'group_' . $i . '_bio';

for example, the first iteration, that $group_bio variable will be ‘group_1_bio‘
the next line will then make ‘group_1_bio‘ into a variable: $group_1_bio, which will store the post_meta data stored in _group_1_bio

that snippet of code will make 13 of my WIZZY editors on the page — this keeps my functions.php leaner!

want to save the data and still keep your functions.php file clean?

this goes somewhere in your save_post class: