PHP searching through a nested array to delete an element by name

Question

I've never really used PHP arrays before as I've just used a database in the past so I'm broadening my horizons a little. Basically I have a simple nested array where each element has a 'name' and some other values. I'm trying to search through the array, which is part of an object. I've looked through a number of previous questions on here and can't get it working, although in the other cases there haven't been objects involved. I've been trying to use a 'needle/haystack' type example but haven't got it working yet.

So in my People class we have among other things:

public $peopleArray;  // this is the array and will be protected once working

// and this is the example search function im trying to modify
public function findPerson($needle, $haystack)
{
    foreach($haystack as $key=>$value)
    {
        if(is_array($value) && array_search($needle, $value) !== false)
        {
            return $key;
        }
    }
    return 'false';
}

And then to call this I currently have:

$searchResult = $People->findPerson('Bob',$people->peopleArray,'name');

I'm not sure if I'm just confusing myself with what the $needle and $value - I need to pass the name value in the search function, so I did have $value in the function arguments, but this still returned nothing. Also I'm not 100% on whether '$key=>$value' needs modifying as $key is undefined.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Addition - print_r of the array:

Array ( [0] => Person Object ( [id:protected] => 1 [name] => Bob [gender] => m ) 
[1] => Person Object ( [id:protected] => 2 [name] => Denise [gender] => f ) 
[2] => Person Object ( [id:protected] => 3 [name] => Madge [gender] => f ) )

Could you add a print_r() of the $peopleArray to your question — Dale
– Dale, Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 11:23
array_search($needle, $value) !== false should be array_search($needle, $value) != false) — Mayank K. Swami
– Mayank K. Swami, Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 11:26

LukeStoneHm · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-10 11:30:59Z

2

Ok this would be a lot easier if you had to post an example array, but I'm going to give this question a shot.

To me it seems you are looping through a 2D array (nested array).

I would loop through multidimensional arrays like such:

for($array as $key => $2ndArray){
    for($2ndArray as $2ndKey => $value){
        if($value == $needle){
           return true;
        }
    }
}

Hope this helps

answered Dec 10, 2012 at 11:30

LukeStoneHm

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3 Comments

Captain Chod Over a year ago

Thanks Luke. One of things that's confusing me is the syntax for this with relation to the array being an attribute of an object. So here $array would be $this->peopleArray, but it doesn't seem to like that. Also I haven't come across anything like the '$key => $2ndArray' part before - would I have that simply as '$key => $name'?

Captain Chod Over a year ago

Ok I've got the search working now. a bit of tinkering and this worked - thanks Luke

LukeStoneHm Over a year ago

glad to see you got it working. I believe this will work for most objects and arrays. Post any changes you made here in the comments, and I will edit the answer.

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