Question

Is there a way to access a multidimensional array from any position? example:

$arr = array (

    1 => array ( 1, 'some-url-one', 'Some Title One' ),

    2 => array ( 2, 'some-url-two', 'Some Title Two' ),

    3 => array ( 2, 'some-url-three', 'Some Title Three' ),

);

Then, if we have the id of an item, for example 2 and want to get the title of that item we simply use:

$title = $arr[2][2]; // which outputs Some Title Two

And if we want to get the url of that same item we simply use:

$title = $arr[2][1];  // which outputs some-url-two

BUT what if we have the URL (some-url-two) and want to get the id or title of that item?

There are 2 obligations:

1- loop through the array and check if that URL exists
2- get the id and the title

How to do that the best way? I already have 3 arrays:

1- id to url

2- url to id

3- id to title

$id2url = array (

    1 => 'some-url-one',
    2 => 'some-url-two',
    3 => 'some-url-three'

);

And the two others are the same procedure. So I wanted to optimize my code by combining the 3 arrays. so how to access the id and the title with a given url?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You might look for array_flip() ^{PHP Manual}, it will make your lookup arrays work with their values as keys:

$id2url = array (

    1 => 'some-url-one',
    2 => 'some-url-two',
    3 => 'some-url-three'

);

$url2id = array_flip($id2url); // keys will become values, and values keys.

$id = $url2id[$url];

$title = $arr[$id][2];