JSON Structure changed, breaks methods - php

Question

Currently, I have below JSON stored in my database:
{
"1": [
{
"row": "My name is Trevor"
}
],
"2": [
{
"row": "Hey there! Some other text."
}
],
"3": [
{
"row": "And more."
}
]
}
Now, the third party API that I am using have changed their output format to:
[
{
"0":"My name is Trevor"
},
{
"0":"Hey there! Some other text."
},
{
"0":"And more."
}
]
I have a PHP function that reads the array-like colums and transforms each column/row. I can call it like:
public function apply(array $table) : array
{
return $this->applyRule($table);
}
Which calls this:
public function applyRule(array $table): array
{
$out = [];
foreach ($table as $col => $rows) {
$out[$col] = array_map([$this, 'rule'], $rows);
}
return $out;
}
Which ultimately calls the parsing rule, like so:
public function rule($content) : array
{
return preg_replace($this->pattern, $this->replacement, $content);
}
However, running above gives me below error:
regexTextReplace::rule() must be of the type array, string returned
I suspect that due to the change in the JSON structure, my parsing functions no longer work.
I am not sure what needs to be changed - can someone assist me?
Edit:
So looking at the answer below, adding [$rows] instead of $rows fixes the error, but ultimately creates a nested array it seems.
If I do a die-dump like:
dd($rows);
It actually does return an array:
array:3 [▼
0 => "My name is Trevor"
1 => ""
2 => ""
]
So why is it seen as a string?

Answer 1

You can send $rows as an array to the rule() function, just wrapping it in []:
array_map([$this, 'rule'], [$rows]);
Then the function will receive an array, not a string.
Otherwise, you can refactor your code and use a string instead, but I can't see much advantage.