Comments on: Recursive (multidimensional) array search in PHP

By: tuba

tuba — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 23:27:04 +0000

thank you very much!

saved enough time to search value in a multi dimentional array

By: Sagan Internet Marke

Sagan Internet Marke — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:19:30 +0000

Works great! Make sure to replace > with a greater than symbol and the $amp; with the Ampersand (6x). Thanks for providing this.

By: Ciprian Dimofte

Ciprian Dimofte — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:23:21 +0000

I’m back with a solution.
Using these 2 functions will search multidimensional arrays and return ALL matching paths (items) NOT just a single item.

if(!function_exists(‘array_search_recursive’)){
function array_search_recursive($needle, $haystack, $key_lookin=”"){
$path = NULL;
if (!empty($key_lookin) && array_key_exists($key_lookin, $haystack) && $needle === $haystack[$key_lookin]) {
$path[] = $key_lookin;
} else {
foreach($haystack as $key => $val) {
if (is_scalar($val) && $val === $needle && empty($key_lookin)) {
$path[] = $key;
break;
} elseif (is_array($val) && $path = array_search_recursive($needle, $val, $key_lookin)) {
array_unshift($path, $key);
break;
}
}
}
return $path;
}
}

// Recursive backtracking function for multidimensional array search
if(!function_exists(‘search_r’)){
function search_r($value, $array){
$results = array();

if(is_array($array)){
$path = array_search_recursive($value, $array);
if (is_array($path) && count($path) > 0){
$results[] = $path;
unset($array[$path[0]]);
$results = array_merge($results, search_r($value, $array));
}else{

}
}

return $results;
}
}

By: Sarita

Sarita — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:23:33 +0000

Great… exactly what i wanted… thanx..

By: Vinny

Vinny — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:37:00 +0000

How would I modify this to work with this array: http://i56.tinypic.com/345hdex.png

By: minh nhut

minh nhut — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:19:45 +0000

help me.if used recursion:
bool contains( char *haystack, char *needle)

By: Vishal Porwal

Vishal Porwal — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 05:20:47 +0000

Be sure your multidimensional array contain boolean true false values. if it contains call the function with $strict=true,function is awesome and very helpful.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:03:36 +0000

I get the following error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘=’, expecting ‘)’ in myphppage.php on line 132

Line 132 being : foreach( $haystack as $key => $val ) {

Any ideas ?

By: Arun Sengupta

Arun Sengupta — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:56:37 +0000

well this is not what i was searching for , but it surely helped me think of the logic to make my own function for a certain process :) Thanks a lot .

By: Sander

Sander — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:44:55 +0000

Thank you! I also couldn’t get the examples on php.net to work in my script. This worked almost immediately!