Multidimensional array remove duplicates from columns and rows - php

Question

I have to insert some data from an excel document into the database.
The data has been saved as .csv and then added into an array through PHP.
The data look like:
Column A Column B Column C
100 200 100
50 10 100
200 200 100
30 10 300
Then I use this to separate each columns (within a foreach loop)
list( $columnA, $columnB) = explode( ',', $values[0] );
$columnA= array($columnA);
print_r($columnA);
The above code prints the values of each column.
So I'm trying to find a way to remove duplicates from each column and then from each row (no matter what the column name is). I want to remove duplicates from the whole document. For the data I posted for example I just need the values 100,200,50,10,30,300 (only the unique values from the whole doc).
UPDATE:
What the original array (the one I've created by using for loop and passing all data from .CSV file) shows:
Array ( [0] => G2100,100%,,,,,,,,,200,0.24,77,51,2,47, )
Array ( [0] => G2101,100%,,,,,,,,,200,0.24,77,42,15,43, )
Array ( [0] => G2102,30%,,,,,,,,,200,0.24,77,38,25,37, )
So by using the list function I mentioned before I split all columns and get the values for each column. THEN if i print $columnB array for example it shows this:
Array ( [0] => 100%) Array ( [0] => 100%) Array ( [0] => 30%)
and so on. When I use unique_array it does nothing.
$columnB = array_unique($columnB, SORT_REGULAR);
I tried to use array_map but it doesn't work either.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I don't understand why does array_unique not works in your case, because actually it solves the problem:
<?php
$columnA = array(50,50,200,10);
$columnB = array(100,50,200,100);
$columnC = array(150,50,250);
$merged = array_merge($columnA, $columnB, $columnC);
$result = array_unique($merged);
var_dump($result);
?>
And output is:
array(6) {
[0]=>
int(50)
[2]=>
int(200)
[3]=>
int(10)
[4]=>
int(100)
[8]=>
int(150)
[10]=>
int(250)
}
This is an trivial example, but if you can manage that your inputs are like arrays above, then you can use array_unique to have only unique values...
EDIT 1:
To remove % sign from string just use rtrim where is needed:
$string = '100%';
$trimmed = (int)rtrim($string,'%');//make it int(or float if you like)
var_dump($trimmed);
EDIT 2:
Related to looping through arrays:
//I suppose this
//Array ( [0] => 100%) Array ( [0] => 100%) Array ( [0] => 30%)
//maps to this
$columnA = array(
0=>array('100%'),
1=>array('100%'),
2=>array('30%')
);
//go through every element
$temp = array();
foreach($columnA as $subArray){
//in this case when we know that there is only one element in the array we can do next:
$temp[] = $subArray[0];
}
$result = array_unique($temp);
echo "<pre>";
var_dump($result);
echo "</pre>";
And this would be the output:
array(2) {
[0]=>
string(4) "100%"
[2]=>
string(3) "30%"
}