Rebuilding arrays - php

Question

I'm working on a tool that fetches stuff from the Wordpress database and handles it in different ways. One of the things I've done is build a simple array called $category, which contains the contents of wp_terms where term_id = <what the user picked>.
Unfortunately, it doesn't contain everything I want, so I've also populated $category->taxonomy with the relevant details from wp_term_taxonomy where term_id = <what the user picked>. It's a one-to-one relationship, so no problems there.
However, I've also got a bunch of stuff I need in wp_termsmeta, where there's a one-to-many relationship of multiple lines with the same term_id. So what I get is something like this:
{
"term_id" : 9813,
"name" : "Who's Who",
"slug" : "ww",
"term_group" : 0,
"taxonomy" :
{
"term_taxonomy_id" : 9832,
"term_id" : 9813,
"taxonomy" : "category",
"description" : "Who's Who is the CSICON Network's very own show about Doctor Who!",
"parent" : 0,
"count" : 58
},
"meta" : [
{
"meta_id" : 8490,
"terms_id" : 9813,
"meta_key" : "hosts",
"meta_value" : "1, 2"
},
{
"meta_id" : 8492,
"terms_id" : 9813,
"meta_key" : "thumbnail",
"meta_value" : "http://csicon.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ww_4-248x248.jpg"
}
]
}
We've got term_id, name, slug, and term_group from wp_terms in $category, then a bunch of stuff in $category->taxonomy and then a bunch of things under $category->meta.
And now for the problem.
If I want to access, say, the thumbnail URL, I'm going to have to traverse down to $category->meta[1]->meta_value, but I can't always know that it'll be [1]. For other categories, it might be [0] or [2]. All I know for sure is that it's the [n] that has meta_key = thumbnail.
Ideally, I would want a good way to iterate through meta and simply save the values for each meta_key as a "real" key under $category, so $category->thumbnail would return the meta_value currently stored there ... But I'll settle with a reliable way of always finding the right meta_value for a specific meta_key.
Any thoughts? :)
SOLVED
Thanks! Instead of $category['meta'] = Category::find($term_id)->catMeta;, I'm now running the following code, and it does exactly what I wanted.
$metaTemp = Category::find($term_id)->catMeta;
$metaTable = json_decode(json_encode($metaTemp), FALSE);
foreach($metaTable as $key => $value) {
$category[$value->meta_key] = $value->meta_value;
}

Answer 1

I would suggest converting meta from an array to an object where properties of that object would be meta_keys. So you get this structure:
{
"term_id" : 9813,
"meta" : {
"hosts" : {
"meta_id" : 8490,
"terms_id" : 9813,
"meta_key" : "hosts",
"meta_value" : "1, 2"
},
"thumbnail" : {
"meta_id" : 8492,
"terms_id" : 9813,
"meta_key" : "thumbnail",
"meta_value" : "http://csicon.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ww_4-248x248.jpg"
}
}
}
So that way search for the right meta would have a constant cost in time rather than linear.
your clients would search for it like so: $category->meta->hosts

Answer 2

Thanks! Instead of $category['meta'] = Category::find($term_id)->catMeta;, I'm now running the following code, and it does exactly what I wanted.
$metaTemp = Category::find($term_id)->catMeta;
$metaTable = json_decode(json_encode($metaTemp), FALSE);
foreach($metaTable as $key => $value) {
$category[$value->meta_key] = $value->meta_value;
}