Question

i have an multi-dimensional array which looks like

$a[] = array('id' => '1', 'city' => 'Delhi', 'pin' => '11A', 'country' => 'India');
$a[] = array('id' => '2', 'city' => 'Delhi', 'pin' => '11B', 'country' => 'India');
$a[] = array('id' => '3', 'city' => 'Delhi', 'pin' => '11C', 'country' => 'India');
$a[] = array('id' => '5', 'city' => 'Bombay', 'pin' => '22A', 'country' => 'India');
$a[] = array('id' => '6', 'city' => 'Bombay', 'pin' => '22B', 'country' => 'India');
$a[] = array('id' => '8', 'city' => 'Bombay', 'pin' => '22D', 'country' => 'India');
$a[] = array('id' => '9', 'city' => 'Chennai', 'pin' => '44A', 'country' => 'India');
$a[] = array('id' => '10', 'city' => 'Chennai', 'pin' => '44B', 'country' => 'India');
$a[] = array('id' => '12', 'city' => 'Chennai', 'pin' => '44D', 'country' => 'India');

i need to split them into separate array based on city name. eg

$delhi_array[] = array('id' => '1', 'city' => 'Delhi', 'pin' => '11A', 'country' => 'India');
$delhi_array[] = array('id' => '2', 'city' => 'Delhi', 'pin' => '11B', 'country' => 'India');
$bombay_array[] = array('id' => '5', 'city' => 'Bombay', 'pin' => '22A', 'country' => 'India');

is it possible???? how do i do it?

Answer 1

The best thing to do would probably be to create another multi-dimensional array, with the cities as the keys for the first level, instead of separate variables:

$result = array();
foreach ($a as $v) {
    $city = $v['city'];
    if (!isset($result[$city])) $result[$city] = array();
    $result[$city][] = $v;
}

So you’d get:

Array
(
    [Delhi] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 1
                    [city] => Delhi
                    [pin] => 11A
                    [country] => India
                )
            ...

    [Bombay] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 5
                    [city] => Bombay
                    [pin] => 22A
                    [country] => India
                )
            ...

    [Chennai] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 9
                    [city] => Chennai
                    [pin] => 44A
                    [country] => India
                )
            ...

)

Then you could access it like:

foreach ($result as $city => $elements) {
    echo $city;
    foreach ($elements as $element) {
        echo $element['pin'];
    }
}