PHP, Convert a string with brackets into an array

Question

I am querying an API and it sends a JSON response which I am then decoding into an array. This part works fine, but the API sends the information in a rather unfriendly format.

I will paste the part I am having issues with. Essentially I am trying to change each like keys into their own array.

Array
(
    [name] => Name
    [address] => 123 Street Rd
    [products[0][product_id]] => 1
    [products[0][price]] => 12.00
    [products[0][name]] => Product Name
    [products[0][product_qty]] => 1
    [products[1][product_id]] => 2
    [products[1][price]] => 3.00
    [products[1][name]] => Product Name
    [products[1][product_qty]] => 1
    [systemNotes[0]] => Note 1
    [systemNotes[1]] => Note 2
)

Now what I would like to do is to make it like this:

Array
(
    [name] => Name
    [address] => 123 Street Rd
    [product] => Array
    (
        [0] => Array
        (
            [product_id] => 1
            [price] => 12.00
            [name] => Product Name
            [product_qty] => 1
        )
        [1] => Array
        (
            [product_id] => 2
            [price] => 3.00
            [name] => Product Name
            [product_qty] => 1
        )
    [systemNotes] => Array
    (
        [0] => Note 1
        [1] => Note 2
    )
)

Is there any practical way of doing this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

References are your friend here:

$result = array();

foreach ($inputArray as $key => $val) {
    $keyParts = preg_split('/[\[\]]+/', $key, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

    $ref = &$result;

    while ($keyParts) {
        $part = array_shift($keyParts);

        if (!isset($ref[$part])) {
            $ref[$part] = array();
        }

        $ref = &$ref[$part];
    }

    $ref = $val;
}

Demo

---

However, there is another, much simpler way, although it is a little less efficient in terms of functional complexity:

parse_str(http_build_query($inputArray), $result);

Demo

Answer 2

With $array your source array :

$new_array = array("name" => $array["name"], "address" => $array["address"]);
foreach($array["products"] AS $product)
{
    $new_array["product"][] = array(
        "product_id" => $product["produit_id"],
        "price" => $product["price"],
        "name" => $product["name"],
        "product_qty" => $product["product_qty"]);
}

foreach($array["systemNotes"] AS $note)
{
   $new_array["systemNotes"][] = $note;
}

It is just browsing and creating a new structure. ^^

Edit : Something generic could be done recursively. Calling the same function as long as the browsed element is_array, and building a new array according to the keys and values. Looks like a file system ^^