PHP foreach() with arrays within arrays?

Asked 2011-04-02T16:01:37.400

I want to call a function on each element in an array. This is obviously very easy with a foreach(), but where I start breaking down is when arrays contain arrays. Can someone help me out with a function that will execute some code for every key -> value pair from a set of arrays within arrays. The depth could, in theory, be infinite, but a good limit would be 3 iterations (array in array in array) if recursion couldn't work.

An example array would be one taken from $_POST below:

Array
(
    [languages] => Array
    (
        [0] => php
        [1] => mysql
        [2] => inglip
    )

    [rates] => Array
    (
        [incall] => Array
        (
            [1hr] => 10
        )

        [outcall] => Array
        (
            [1hr] => 10
        )

    )
)

Just to make sure, what I want to do is run a piece of code (a function) that is passed every 'end node' in the array structure, so in the example above, it would be called when...

[0] => php
[1] => mysql
[2] => inglip
[1hr] => 10
[1hr] => 10

... is found.

Thanks for any help,

James

php arrays iteration

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2 Answers

That's a perfect job for Iterators:

$iterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveArrayIterator($array));
foreach($iterator as $key => $value) {
    echo "$key => $value\n";
}

See Introduction to SPL Iterators and Live Demo on codepad

EDIT: the alternative would be array_walk_recursive as show in Finbarr's answer below

answered 2011-04-02T16:09:49.473

function traverseArray($array)
{ 
    foreach($array as $key=>$value)
    { 
        if(is_array($value))
        { 
            traverseArray($value); 
        }else{
            echo '['.$key.']'.' => '.$value.'<br />\n'; 
        } 
    }
}

answered 2011-04-02T16:14:33.733

PHP foreach() with arrays within arrays?

2 Answers

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