Sorting very long json object with php - php

Question

I am working with an API and i am trying to sort the json object it returns to me. Here is a small cut out of the json object
Now i want to sort this because i only want to save part of the data. Say i wanted to save the "_ID" here. THe data i need is really way further down but i think if i can figure out how to get this, i can figure out the rest. Since as you can see from the picture, it contains many objects inside objects and arrays within arrays its very confusing for me to target the specific values i want
I have tried something like this:
$body = $response->getBody();
$data = json_decode($body, true);
$sortedData = $data."hits".hits[0]."_id";
return $sortedData
Also tried without the quotation marks, but i cant really get it to work. Im very new to PHP.

Answer 1

You decoded these objects into associative arrays, so $data['hits']['hits'][0]['_id'] should be the correct way to access that element.
https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php explains the basics of how to work with arrays and access elements within them.

Answer 2

Since php 5.5, you can use array_column to get specific column from the array :
$body = $response->getBody();
$data = json_decode($body, true);
$sortedData = array_column($data, '_id');
return $sortedData;
Edit
From what I see on your array sample, you want to do a recursive multidimensional arrays search (not just 2-dimensional).
Assuming you have array like this :
$arr = array(
array(
'x' => '10',
'name' => 'blah',
'other' => array(
'_id' => '26',
'color' => '10x',
)
),
array(
'x' => '7',
'name' => 'blahblah',
'other' => array(
'_id' => '29',
'color' => '7x',
)
),
array(
'x' => '15',
'name' => 'blahblahblah',
'other' => array(
'_id' => '27',
'color' => '15x',
)
),
array(
'x' => '1',
'name' => 'sdf',
'other' => array(
'_id' => '41',
'color' => '1x',
)
),
array(
'x' => '4',
'name' => '3dgdg',
'other' => array(
'_id' => '31',
'color' => '4x',
)
),
array(
'x' => '5',
'name' => 'nmnmnm',
'other' => array(
'_id' => '36',
'color' => '5x',
)
),
array(
'x' => '21',
'name' => 'dhshshhh',
'other' => array(
'_id' => '34',
'color' => '21x',
)
)
);
And you want to get the _id key. In that case you could try this function :
function array_column_recursive(array $haystack, $needle) {
$found = [];
array_walk_recursive($haystack, function($value, $key) use (&$found, $needle) {
if ($key == $needle)
$found[] = $value;
});
return $found;
}
Usage :
$ids = array_column_recursive($arr,'_id');
sort($ids);
print_r($ids);
Reference :
array_column
array_column_recursive