Pushing multidimensional arrays as keys on another array - php

Question

I have an empty array (as an example) and a number of multidimensional arrays I would like to push onto this array. However I would like the keys of each multidimensional array to become a key of the empty array
Using
$myEmptyArray[] = $arrayOne;
$myEmptyArray[] = $arrayTwo;
$myEmptyArray[] = $arrayThree;
I get
[
0 => ['one' => ['a' => 'stuff']],
1 => ['two' => ['b' => 'stuff']],
2 => ['three' => ['c' => 'stuff']]
]
I would prefer to have
[
'one' => ['a' => 'stuff'],
'two' => ['b' => 'stuff'],
'three' => ['c' => 'stuff']
]
What is a neat and compact way (one liner or native php function) to do this without having to read the array key with a foreach and then assign this key explicitly to the empty array with the value like
foreach ($arrayOne as $key => $value) {
$myEmptyArray[$key] = $value
}
As I will want to use this in many places in my code

Answer 1

You can use the + (union) operator which "returns the right-hand array appended to the left-hand array; for keys that exist in both arrays, the elements from the left-hand array will be used, and the matching elements from the right-hand array will be ignored".
$array = [];
$array += ['one' => ['a' => 'stuff']];
$array += ['two' => ['b' => 'stuff']];
$array += ['three' => ['b' => 'stuff']];
var_dump($array);
/*
array(3) {
'one' =>
array(1) {
'a' =>
string(5) "stuff"
}
'two' =>
array(1) {
'b' =>
string(5) "stuff"
}
'three' =>
array(1) {
'b' =>
string(5) "stuff"
}
}
*/

Answer 2

You can simply use + to combine those array in the way you want:
$arrayOne = array('one' => array('a' => 'stuff'));
$arrayTwo = array('two' => array('b' => 'stuff'));
$arrayThree = array('three' => array('c' => 'stuff'));
$myEmptyArray = array();
$myEmptyArray += $arrayOne;
$myEmptyArray += $arrayTwo;
$myEmptyArray += $arrayThree;
echo "<pre>"; print_r($myEmptyArray); echo "</pre>";
OUTPUT:
Array
(
[one] => Array
(
[a] => stuff
)
[two] => Array
(
[b] => stuff
)
[three] => Array
(
[c] => stuff
)
)