Question

Suppose I have an array such as the one below. If I wanted to separate and divide out the array below into multiple arrays containing records with only one tl_id, how would I go about doing this efficiently?

Example: so notice how there are two tl_id’s (there could possibly be more): 275 and 328. I want two separate out that big array into two arrays. array1 would contain all the records that has tl_id’s of 275. And array2 would contain all the records with tl_id 328.

I was thinking of a for loop and separating it out that way, but was hoping there’s some PHP wizardy function I can use to simplify this action.

array(5) {
  [0] => array(14) {
    ["tl_id"] => int(275)
    ["tl_email"] => string(27) "[e-mail]"
    ["tl_first_name"] => string(9) "Jane"
    ["tl_last_name"] => string(6) "Doe"
    ["target_id"] => int(354)
    ["target_first_name"] => string(4) "Rudy"
    ["target_last_name"] => string(5) "Smith"
  }
  [1] => array(14) {
    ["tl_id"] => int(275)
    ["tl_email"] => string(27) "[e-mail]"
    ["tl_first_name"] => string(9) "Jane"
    ["tl_last_name"] => string(6) "Doe"
    ["target_id"] => int(354)
    ["target_first_name"] => string(4) "Rudy"
    ["target_last_name"] => string(5) "Smith"
  }
  [2] => array(14) {
    ["tl_id"] => int(275)
    ["tl_email"] => string(27) "[e-mail]"
    ["tl_first_name"] => string(9) "Jane"
    ["tl_last_name"] => string(6) "Doe"
    ["target_id"] => int(194)
    ["target_first_name"] => string(5) "Katie"
    ["target_last_name"] => string(4) "Smith"
  }
  [3] => array(14) {
    ["tl_id"] => int(328)
    ["tl_email"] => string(20) "[e-mail]"
    ["tl_first_name"] => string(6) "John"
    ["tl_last_name"] => string(9) "Smith"
    ["target_id"] => int(219)
    ["target_first_name"] => string(6) "Kelly"
    ["target_last_name"] => string(5) "Smith"
  }
  [4] => array(14) {
    ["tl_id"] => int(328)
    ["tl_email"] => string(20) "[e-mail]"
    ["tl_first_name"] => string(6) "John"
    ["tl_last_name"] => string(9) "Smith"
    ["target_id"] => int(213)
    ["target_first_name"] => string(5) "Chris"
    ["target_last_name"] => string(5) "Jones"
  }
}

Answer 1

I hope this will be of help.

<?php
$test = array(
  array(
    "tl_id" => 275,
    "tl_email" => "[e-mail]",
    "tl_first_name" => "Jane",
    "tl_last_name" => "Doe",
    "target_id" => 354,
    "target_first_name" => "Rudy",
    "target_last_name" => "Smith",
  ),
  array(
    "tl_id" => 275,
    "tl_email" => "[e-mail]",
    "tl_first_name" => "Jane",
    "tl_last_name" => "Doe",
    "target_id" => 354,
    "target_first_name" => "Rudy",
    "target_last_name" => "Smith",
  ),
  array(
    "tl_id" => 278,
    "tl_email" => "[e-mail]",
    "tl_first_name" => "Jane",
    "tl_last_name" => "Doe",
    "target_id" => 354,
    "target_first_name" => "Rudy",
    "target_last_name" => "Smith",
  ),
);

$result = array_reduce($test,
    function($result, $item)
    {
        $result[$item["tl_id"]][] = $item;
        return $result;
    }
);
print_r($result);

This function walks the array and builds a new array where the items have been grouped by id.