Question

I have a multidimensional array as shown below. How do I change the keys that start with “id of”?

Array
(
[0] => Array
    (
        [id of ten] => 1871
        [name] => bob
    )

[1] => Array
    (
        [id of nine hundred thousand] => 12581
        [name] => barney        
    )

)

Normally, you’d do something like:

foreach ( $array as $k=>$v )
{
  $array[$k] ['id'] = $array[$k] ['old'];
  unset($array[$k]['old']);
}

In my case, the key changes dynamically (there are thousands of keys in my multidimensional array and they are random but they will always start w/ “id of…”)

thx!

Answer 1

If the ‘id of’ key is always the first element of the array, you can use the following:

foreach ($input as &$value)
{
  $value['key'] = reset($value);
  $key = key($value);
  unset($value[$key]);
}

Otherwise, the following worked for me:

foreach ($input as &$value)
{
  foreach ($value as $key=>$el) {
    if (substr($key, 0, 5) == 'id of') {
      $value['key'] = $el;
      unset($value[$key]);
    }
  }
}

In both cases you can change $value['key'] to whatever you want the new key to be.