Question

I have two arrays that I would like to compare and ultimately wind up with a single array with everything combined, having no duplicates. Can someone please tell me which function I should use? There are so many that it’s a bit confusing.

$array1[]['name'] = 'Kim, Jones';
$array1[]['name'] = 'Jim, Miller';

array1 is an array I built that I want added to an array coming from the database. The key in the second array is also named “name”. Thanks.

EDIT:

I managed to merge these two arrays but I can still see duplicates.

This is what the first array looks like:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [WNumber] => ADMIN
            [Name] => Tim, Cooley
            [Employer] => CalPERS
            [Student] => 1
            [Perm] => 1
            [QA] => 0
            [Supervisor] => 1
            [RQW] => 0
        )

My second array is built like this:

$add_names[]['Name']='Jim, Jones';

I just want to add $add_names to the first array WHERE there are no duplicates.

Answer 1

I’m tempted to sell you on CakePHP, since it has a number of functions that makes this easy in its “Set” class. Your problem is that you have the results in a nested array. A simple “array_unique” does not work in a nested array.

I’d do it the old fashioned way…

$array1[]['name'] = 'Kim, Jones';
$array1[]['name'] = 'Jim, Miller';

$array2[]['name'] = 'Kim, Jones';
$array2[]['name'] = 'Jimbo, Miller';
$array2[]['name'] = 'Jim, Jones';

$new_array=array_merge($array1, $array2);
$out_array = array();
$key_array = array();
foreach($new_array as $i => $row) {
        if (empty($key_array[$row['name']])) {
                $out_array[] = $row;
        }
        $key_array[$row['name']] = 1;
}

print_r($out_array);

This code works for me…