Combing matched keys in an array - php

Question

Edited
I get the combined item_ids now, but not the single item_ids.
I have an array with three keys.
$searchArray = {
[0]=> array(3) {
["keyword"]=> string(7) "history"
["url"]=> string(7) "history"
["item_id"]=> string(2) "16"
}
[1]=> array(3) {
["keyword"]=> string(4) "past"
["url"]=> string(4) "past"
["item_id"]=> string(2) "16"
}
[89]=> array(3) {
["keyword"]=> string(10) "biomedical"
["url"]=> string(10) "biomedical"
["item_id"]=> string(2) "34"
}
[93]=> array(3) {
["keyword"]=> string(10) "biomedical"
["url"]=> string(10) "biomedical"
["item_id"]=> string(2) "35"
}
I want to combine the options that have the same keyword/url.
Just need to check if keyword matches.
The final format needs to be something that jquery autocomplete can accept, where I can assign the text to keyword and the value to url, id to the item_id.
There were only two keys in the array before and I would combine matches this way.
foreach ($searchArray as $row)
{
$combineMatches[ $row['keyword'] ][] = $row['item_id'];
}
result after using json_encode():
"anthropologist":["27","37"],
"biomedical":["34","35"],
"m.s.":["18","19","23"]
What I currently have:
$combineMatches = array();
foreach ($searchArray as $row)
{
$match =
array_search($row['keyword'],array_column($combineMatches,'keyword'));
if($match){
$combineMatches[$match]['item_id']+= $row['item_id'];
}else{
array_push($combineMatches, [
'keyword' => $row['keyword'],
'url' => $row['url'],
'item_id' => array_push($row['item_id'])
]);
}
}
Result:
[7]=> array(3)
{
["keyword"]=> string(8) "theology"
["url"]=> string(8) "theology"
["item_id"]=> NULL
}
[13]=> array(3)
{
["keyword"]=> string(7) "writing"
["url"]=> string(7) "writing"
["item_id"]=> NULL
}
How do I add to the array column of just item_id ? Which I see is a string, but I need as an array.
This gets JSON encoded in the end of the PHP and read by jquery autocomplete.

Answer 1

Thank you for pointing out the string/array issue.
I changed how to add to the third key if there is a match, and if there isn't a match the solution was changing the array_push to just array.
$combineMatches = array();
foreach ($searchArray as $row)
{
$match=array_search($row['keyword'],array_column($combineMatches,'keyword'));
if($match){
$combineMatches[$match]['item_id'][] = $row['item_id'];
}else{
array_push($combineMatches, [
'keyword' => $row['keyword'],
'url' => $row['url'],
'item_id' => array($row['item_id'])
]);
}
}