Question

What I’m trying to do:

Obtaining the result of a find() query in Cakephp as an array of rows

Why?:

I want to send the results to Excel, so the regular cakePHP format does not suits me.

Solutions I know of:

I see two possible solutions:

• custom SQL query
• treating the returned array to fit my needs

My question:

Is there a simpler solution to get the solution in a standart format: an array with rows?

Edit:

cakephp returns arrays like this:

$data=array("0"=>array("ModelName"=>array(Model.field1,Model.field2),
                       "LinkedModelName"=>array(LinkedModel.field1,LinkedModel.field2)

)

I want:

$data=array("0"=>array(Model.field1,Model.field2,LinkedModel.field1,LinkedModel.field2));

Solution: (thks Dave):

    foreach($data as &$row){
    $row = Set::flatten($row);
    }

Answer 1

According to the book [here], you can use Set::flatten($data); to “Collapse a multi-dimensional array into a single dimension”.

It’s example:

<?php
$arr = array(
    array(
        'Post' => array('id' => '1', 'title' => 'First Post'),
        'Author' => array('id' => '1', 'user' => 'Kyle'),
    ),
    array(
        'Post' => array('id' => '2', 'title' => 'Second Post'),
        'Author' => array('id' => '3', 'user' => 'Crystal'),
    ),
);
$res = Set::flatten($arr);
/* $res now looks like:
    Array (
        [0.Post.id] => 1
        [0.Post.title] => First Post
        [0.Author.id] => 1
        [0.Author.user] => Kyle
        [1.Post.id] => 2
        [1.Post.title] => Second Post
        [1.Author.id] => 3
        [1.Author.user] => Crystal
    )
*/

From there (if you need), it should be pretty simple to remove the #. prefix on the fields.

Something like this possibly:

preg_replace('/^[0-9]+\.+/', '', $string);

I haven’t tested it, but it’s an accepted answer to a very similar issue here: Remove numeric prefix from string – PHP regex.