Question

I have the following array:

$var_array = array(
 "length"  => 5,
 "breadth"  => 5,
 "color" => "blue",
 "size"  => "medium",
 "shape" => "square");

How do I extract selected variables out of the array by specifying the keys?

Example if I specify breadth and size, I get:

$breadth = 5;
$size = "medium";
$var_array = array(
 "length"  => 5,
 "color" => "blue",
 "shape" => "square");

Answer 1

array_diff_key and array_intersect_key:

$array  = array(
  'breadth' => 1, 
  'size' => 2, 
  'length' => 3,
  'colour' => 4,
  'shape' => 5
);

$keys      = array('breadth', 'size');
$new_array = array_intersect_key($array, array_flip($keys));
$array     = array_diff_key($array, $new_array);

Will produce:

// $new_array
array(2) {
 ["breadth"] => int(1)
 ["size"]    => int(2)
}

// $array
array(3) {
 ["length"] => int(3)
 ["colour"] => int(4)
 ["shape"]  => int(5)
}

If you want to put them into local variables you can do:

list($length, $colour, $shape) = array_values($new_array);

Or a less clear version:

extract($new_array);