Question

I have an field name that is passed to me via an ajax function which i need to use to lookup values in an existing array. e.g.

$myarray = array(
    'name' => array(
        '0' => array(
            'first' => 'Steve'
        )
    ),
);


$incoming = 'name[0][first]';

So using the $incoming variable i wanted to get the corresponding data out of the array but cant figure out how to convert the string into the array indicies lookup.

Im trying to come up with a method that will work regardless of the level of nesting in the array.

Answer 1

Suggestion #1

Change the jQuery to send the request as JSON, which can instantly be converted into a PHP array with json_decode.

Suggestion #2

If you can’t switch to JSON, use preg_split to split the incoming field and loop over them to grab the correct array element. Something along the lines of:

$incoming = 'name[0][first]';

$parts = preg_split('/(\[|\])/', $incoming, null, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

$el = $myarray;
foreach ($parts as $part) {
    $el = $el[$part];
}

echo $el; // Steve