How to Recursively find secondary profiles and merge into primary one - php

Question

I have a sample array, in which I would like to find the secondary ones and recursively check the secondary one until all secondary profiles gets unset from PHP array.
Here is the example array.
$testarray= array(
array(
array(
'id' => 'ccdbh-743748',
'name' => 'test',
'email' => 'testemail#test.com',
'newsletter' => 'abc,def,ghi',
'created_at' => '1546753453',
'profile_type' => 'primary'
),
array(
'id' => 'uisvuiacsiodciosd',
'name' => 'test',
'email' => 'testemail#test.com',
'newsletter' => 'def',
'created_at' => '1546753453',
'profile_type' => 'secondary'
),
array(
'id' => 'sdcisodjcosjdocij',
'name' => 'test',
'email' => 'testemail#test.com',
'newsletter' => 'ghi',
'created_at' => '1546753453',
'profile_type' => 'secondary'
)
),
array(
array(
'id' => 'sdcisodjcosjdocij',
'name' => 'test',
'email' => 'testemail#test.com',
'newsletter' => 'abc',
'created_at' => '1546753453',
'profile_type' => 'secondary'
),
array(
'id' => 'ccdbh-743748',
'name' => 'test',
'email' => 'testemail#test.com',
'newsletter' => 'abc,def',
'created_at' => '1546753453',
'profile_type' => 'primary'
)
),
array(
array(
'id' => 'sdcisodjcosjdocij',
'name' => 'test',
'email' => 'testemail#test.com',
'newsletter' => 'abc',
'created_at' => '1546753453',
'profile_type' => 'secondary'
),
array(
'id' => 'sdcisodjcoscisudhiu',
'name' => 'test',
'email' => 'testemail#test.com',
'newsletter' => 'abc,def',
'created_at' => '1515217453',
'profile_type' => 'primary'
)
)
);
What I have tried so far.
function duplicate_profiles_merger ($profiles_array) {
$innderdata = array();
foreach ($profiles_array as $key => $val) {
if (is_array($val) && in_array('secondary', $val)) {
unset($val[$key]);
// echo 'recursion';
duplicate_profiles_merger($profiles_array);
} else {
// $innderdata = $val;
//POST Request API code goes here. Like curl request.
//data '{"primary":{"email":"cool.person#company.com"}, "secondary":{"email":"cperson#gmail.com"}}'
echo 'done';
}
return $innderdata = $val;
}
}
But this gets me in an infinite state.
Below is the scenario that I want to achieve.
Here is the data that I need to pass through the API post request.
data '{"primary":{"email":"cool.person#company.com"}, "secondary":{"email":"cperson#gmail.com"}}'
Now I need the primary email and the secondary email for profile merge.
But there is more than one secondary profile that exists in the array, so for that, I need some kind of recursive functionality.
Thanks

Answer 1

This answer sums up the comment section:
You call your recursion method with the same exact array you started with. But PHP is passing arguments as value as default, meaning you only modify the $var element, but not the $profiles_array, because of this you are creating an infinite loop.
Plus: There is no need for recursion here because there is no "child-structure" that would profit from real recursion here. A simple loop should do the trick.
function duplicate_profiles_merger ($profiles_array) {
$innderdata = array();
foreach ($profiles_array as $key => $val) {
if (is_array($val) && $val['profile_type'] == 'primary') {
array_push($innerdata, $val);
}
}
return $innerdata;
}
This should be all there is to it. You can also modify the existing array, eg. deleting all secondary profiles. Then you have to pass the array as reference, not value: https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.references.pass.php