How to loop through an array without repeating? - php

Question

I'm trying to get data from API and I receive this
[
{
"service": 1,
"name": "Followers",
"type": "Default",
"category": "First Category",
"rate": "0.90",
"min": "50",
"max": "10000"
},
{
"service": 2,
"name": "Comments",
"type": "Custom Comments",
"category": "Second Category",
"rate": "8",
"min": "10",
"max": "1500"
}
]
I want to get the category for each service without repeating the same category twice.
Edited*
I have this code
$servers = $this->Setting->Loop('api','WHERE is_active = 1');
foreach($servers->result() as $server){
foreach($this->Api_Connect->services($server->api_url, $server->api_key) as $item) {
echo '<option data-server='.$server->id.' data-percent='.$server->addon_percent.' data-price='.$item['rate'].' data-min='.$item['min'].' data-max='.$item['max'].' value="'.$item['service'].'">- '.$item['name'].'</option>';
}
}
which connect to each server with api url and key and return with the services.

Answer 1

We can set a new array, and push categories in the new array, and check if the new value does not exist do so:
$data = '[
{
"service": 1,
"name": "Followers",
"type": "Default",
"category": "First Category",
"rate": "0.90",
"min": "50",
"max": "10000"
},
{
"service": 2,
"name": "Comments",
"type": "Custom Comments",
"category": "Second Category",
"rate": "8",
"min": "10",
"max": "1500"
},
{
"service": 2,
"name": "Comments",
"type": "Custom Comments",
"category": "Second Category",
"rate": "8",
"min": "10",
"max": "1500"
}
]';
$data = json_decode($data, true);
$category = array();
foreach ($data as $value) {
if (!array_search($value["category"], $category)) {
array_push($category, $value["category"]);
}
}
var_dump($category);
Output
array(2) {
[0]=>
string(14) "First Category"
[1]=>
string(15) "Second Category"
}
Edit:
Based on Andreas's advice, we can also use if(in_array()) in the loop using:
$category[$value["category"]] = $value["category"];
which is much more efficient.

Answer 2

$array = [];
foreach($object as $key => $value) {
// object is data you receive from API
array_push($array,$value->category);
}
// to get unique values
$array = array_unique($array);
I hope this code solve your problem

Answer 3

The fastest method is to use array_column.
Array_column will isolate one column of the array.
The third parameter of array_column will set the key name.
This is what we want.
Because you don't want duplicates we set something as value and "category" as key.
This means it will loop once and overwrite the keys that is duplicated.
The other methods posted here will need to check if the item is already added to the list or using array_unique which needs to compare each item with every other item, that is a slow function when you give it a large array.
$data = '[
{
"service": 1,
"name": "Followers",
"type": "Default",
"category": "First Category",
"rate": "0.90",
"min": "50",
"max": "10000"
},
{
"service": 2,
"name": "Comments",
"type": "Custom Comments",
"category": "Second Category",
"rate": "8",
"min": "10",
"max": "1500"
},
{
"service": 2,
"name": "Comments",
"type": "Custom Comments",
"category": "Second Category",
"rate": "8",
"min": "10",
"max": "1500"
}
]';
$data = json_decode($data, true);
$category = array_column($data, "rate", "category");
var_dump($category);
Output of this:
// Note it's only the keys we want, the values are not interesting
array(2) {
["First Category"]=>
string(4) "0.90"
["Second Category"]=>
string(1) "8"
}

Answer 4

$jsonResponse='[
{
"service": 1,
"name": "Followers",
"type": "Default",
"category": "First Category",
"rate": "0.90",
"min": "50",
"max": "10000"
},
{
"service": 2,
"name": "Comments",
"type": "Custom Comments",
"category": "Second Category",
"rate": "8",
"min": "10",
"max": "1500"
}
]';
$listData=json_decode(jsonResponse,true);
foreach($listData as $valRes){
echo $valRes['category'];
}
you can get category