Question

I have a multi-dimensional array in the following format:

[0] = (
    'id' => '1',
    'type' => 'fish', 
    'owner' => 'bob',
)

[1] = (
    'id' => '2',
    'type' => 'cat', 
    'owner' => 'mary',
)

[2] = (
    'id' => '3',
    'type' => 'dog', 
    'owner' => 'larry',
)

[3] = (
    'id' => '2',
    'type' => 'cat', 
    'owner' => 'fred',
)

I would like to search for a value, and they return an array that contains all keys from matching arrays and looks like this on a search for type=cat:

[0] = (
    'id' => '2',
    'type' => 'cat', 
    'owner' => 'mary',
)

[1] = (
    'id' => '2',
    'type' => 'cat', 
    'owner' => 'fred',
)

I know I’m trying to treat the array as a database, but in this case it’s dynamic data that doesn’t need to be stored once the program ends.

Any advice?

Answer 1

Loop through the array:

function loopAndFind($array, $index, $search){
         $returnArray = array();
         foreach($array as $k=>$v){
               if($v[$index] == $search){   
                    $returnArray[] = $v;
               }
         }
         return $returnArray;
}

//use it:
$newArray = loopAndFind($oldArray, 'type', 'cat');