Get the first level key of the first row containing a specified column value in a 2d array

function searchForId($id, $array) {
   foreach ($array as $key => $val) {
       if ($val['uid'] === $id) {
           return $key;
       }
   }
   return null;
}

This will work. You should call it like this:

$id = searchForId('100', $userdb);

It is important to know that if you are using === operator compared types have to be exactly same, in this example you have to search string or just use == instead ===.

Based on angoru answer. In later versions of PHP (>= 5.5.0) you can use one-liner.

$key = array_search('100', array_column($userdb, 'uid'));

Here is documentation: http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-column.php.

I know this was already answered, but I used this and extended it a little more in my code so that you didn't have search by only the uid. I just want to share it for anyone else who may need that functionality.

Here's my example and please bare in mind this is my first answer. I took out the param array because I only needed to search one specific array, but you could easily add it in. I wanted to essentially search by more than just the uid.

Also, in my situation there may be multiple keys to return as a result of searching by other fields that may not be unique.

 /**
     * @param array multidimensional 
     * @param string value to search for, ie a specific field name like name_first
     * @param string associative key to find it in, ie field_name
     * 
     * @return array keys.
     */
     function search_revisions($dataArray, $search_value, $key_to_search) {
        // This function will search the revisions for a certain value
        // related to the associative key you are looking for.
        $keys = array();
        foreach ($dataArray as $key => $cur_value) {
            if ($cur_value[$key_to_search] == $search_value) {
                $keys[] = $key;
            }
        }
        return $keys;
    }

Later, I ended up writing this to allow me to search for another value and associative key. So my first example allows you to search for a value in any specific associative key, and return all the matches.

This second example shows you where a value ('Taylor') is found in a certain associative key (first_name) AND another value (true) is found in another associative key (employed), and returns all matches (Keys where people with first name 'Taylor' AND are employed).

/**
 * @param array multidimensional 
 * @param string $search_value The value to search for, ie a specific 'Taylor'
 * @param string $key_to_search The associative key to find it in, ie f