Question

Let’s say I have the following multi-dimensional array:

$fruits['apple']['name'] = 'macintosh';

Is there any way of referencing the entire key path in a single variable?

I would like to somehow do the following:

$path = "['apple']['name']";
echo $fruits[$path];

//output would be "macintosh"

Answer 1

Is there any way of referencing the entire key path in a single variable?

1) In a way like this: $fruits[$variable], the answer is no, there isn’t.

Of course, there are several ways you can split a single $variable in two or more, and then use its parts separetely ($fruits[$part1][$part2])

This is a generic solution:

function get_path($array, $path)
{
    $value = $array;
    $parts = explode("']['", trim($path, "[']"));
    foreach($parts as $key)
    {
        $value = $value[$key];
    }
    return $value;
}

$fruits['apple']['name'] = 'macintosh';
$path = "['apple']['name']";
echo get_path($fruits, $path);

// output = 'macintosh'

---

2) As also pointed, you could use “eval”, which is not recommended:

$fruits['apple']['name'] = 'macintosh';
$path = "['apple']['name']";
eval('echo $fruits' . $path . ';');

// output = 'macintosh'

---

3) Finally, if you want to access an element of the array using a reference variable, then simply:

$fruits['apple']['name'] = 'macintosh';
$path &= $fruits['apple']['name'];
echo $path;  // output = 'macintosh'

$path = 'MSX';
echo $fruits['apple']['name'];  // output = 'MSX'