In this PHP programming tutorial, we take a look at Introduction to PHP Associative Arrays, PHP Data Structures, What are Associative Arrays Explained. In this lesson we learn that ordered arrays are good when the data we have lends itself to being collected into indexed (ordered) lists. Our data is able to be collected as well as organized in many ways. Associative Arrays are good when we want to store a bunch of information about a specific thing. The fundamental concept of computer science that we learn about is “the map”. Maps help us be associating keys with values. A key is an integer or string that we are able to use to access a value (of any type). Like we can create an associative array called person with a key of “name” and value of “Jose Moreno”. This will be much more understandable than trying to associate name with index 0. We are able to use the associated key to find our value which is much easier. We also find out that we have been working with a map since we started working with arrays. An ordered array in PHP is implemented as a map where the keys are index locations. They are the same thing, and we learn that we are able to assign meaningful keys to values (as opposed to indices) and these are what we call associative arrays. Thanks for watching Introduction to PHP Associative Arrays, PHP Data Structures, What are Associative Arrays Explained.