Question

I have an array where I want to search the uid and get the key of the array.

Examples

Assume we have the following 2-dimensional array:

$userdb = array(
    array(
        'uid' => '100',
        'name' => 'Sandra Shush',
        'pic_square' => 'urlof100'
    ),
    array(
        'uid' => '5465',
        'name' => 'Stefanie Mcmohn',
        'pic_square' => 'urlof100'
    ),
    array(
        'uid' => '40489',
        'name' => 'Michael',
        'pic_square' => 'urlof40489'
    )
);

The function call search_by_uid(100) (uid of first user) should return 0.

The function call search_by_uid(40489) should return 2.

I tried making loops, but I want a faster executing code.

Answer 1

function searchForId($id, $array) {
   foreach ($array as $key => $val) {
       if ($val['uid'] === $id) {
           return $key;
       }
   }
   return null;
}

This will work. You should call it like this:

$id = searchForId('100', $userdb);

It is important to know that if you are using === operator compared types have to be exactly same, in this example you have to search string or just use == instead ===.

Based on angoru answer. In later versions of PHP (>= 5.5.0) you can use one-liner.

$key = array_search('100', array_column($userdb, 'uid'));

Here is documentation: http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-column.php.