Question

This is more a request for a quick piece of advice as, I find it very hard to believe there isn’t a native function for the task at hand. Consider the following:

array => 
(0) => array("id" => "1", "groupname" => "fudge", "etc" => "lorem ipsum"),
(1) => array("id" => "2", "groupname" => "toffee", "etc" => "lorem ipsum"),
(2) => array("id" => "3", "groupname" => "caramel", "etc" => "lorem ipsum")
)

What I am looking to get is a new array which uses only “groupname” so would equal:

array =>
(0) => "fudge",
(1) => "toffee",
(2) => "caramel"
)

I know this is very simple to achieve recursively going through the original array, but I was wondering if there is a much simpler way to achieve the end result. I’ve looked around the internet and on the PHP manual and can’t find anything

Thank you kindly for reading this question
Simon

Answer 1

If you are using PHP 5.3, you can use array_map ^[docs] like this:

$newArray = array_map(function($value) {
    return $value['groupname'];
}, $array);

Otherwise create a normal function an pass its name (see the documentation).

Another solution is to just iterate over the array:

$newArray = array();

foreach($array as $value) {
    $newArray[] = $value['groupname'];
}

You definitely don’t have to use recursion.