Translate string into reference to associative array index in PHP

Question

I have an array like this:

[0] => [basketball][player]
[1] => [basketball][threes][player]
[2] => [basketball][home][leaders][player]
[3] => [basketball][away][leaders][player]

I want to translate each element into a reference to a certain element in an associative array:

$post['basketball']['player']
$post['basketball']['threes']['player']
etc.

Is there any way to automatically translate the former into the latter? It would be super convenient if so, and presumably super inconvenient if not, so I hope there's a way, but I don't know what it might be.

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-06 17:34:51Z

2

I would say something like this:

Strip off the [ at the start and the ] at the end (using substr)
Use explode to split the string by ][
Loop through the exploded pieces, using them as keys to the array.

So something like this:

$array = ..... // the big array
$str = "[basketball][player]";
$keys = explode("][",substr($str,1,-1));
$pos = $array; // PHP does a lazy copy, so there is no performance issue here
while($key = array_shift($keys)) $pos = $pos[$key];
// $pos is now your target element

answered Jul 6, 2012 at 17:34

Niet the Dark Absol

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2 Comments

Jason Swett Over a year ago

Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work. I believe this would try to get $pos['basketball'] and $pos['player'] separately, when what I want is $pos['basketball']['player']. (This conclusion is based on copying and pasting this code into my app and trying it.)

Niet the Dark Absol Over a year ago

You are correct, it gets $pos['basketball'] followed by $pos['player'], but it assigns back to $pos so the result is $pos['basketball']['player'].

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