String exploded twice array foreach loop - php

Question

I have this code:
$sample = '5ml milk, 5ml water, 3pcs carrots';
echo $sample."</br>";
$first_slice = explode(',',$sample);
foreach($first_slice as $key => $value)
{
$second_slice[$key] = explode(' ',$value);
}
print_r($second_slice);
It does what i want, i need to separate 5ml milk from 5ml water and 3pcs carrots
from there i need to separate again 5ml from milk.
My question is, how do i select/echo only 5ml and milk as a single data.
The above code produces the result:
Array ( [0] => Array ( [0] => 5ml [1] => milk ) [1] => Array ( [0] =>
[1] => 5ml [2] => water ) [2] => Array ( [0] => [1] => 3pcs [2] =>
carrots ) )
Im quite confused on how do i select/echo since i exploded it twice means its an array inside an array. Please correct me if my understanding is wrong.
Additional question: I have to explode it thrice. Since my table has name,quantity,unit columns.
name for the ingredient name, quantity for the quantity, unit for the unit of measurement.
respectively [milk] [5] [ml]
I have done the same to make another array for separating measurement and quantity. But it cancels out the redundancy.
foreach($second_slice as $key=>$value)
{
$arr = explode('-',$value);
$third_slice[$arr[1]] = $arr[0];
}
The output is:
Array ( [ml] => 5 [pcs] => 3 )
There are 2 5ml's on the string. How do i not avoid it being taken out? since they are separate ingredients.

Answer 1

Currently, you have a multi-dimensional array. You can simpify this approach and flatten your array to one dimension. I suggest you modify your foreach loop as below:
foreach($first_slice as $key => $value)
{
$arr = explode(' ', trim($value));
$second_slice[$arr[1]] = $arr[0];
}
print_r($second_slice);
Produces the output:
Array
(
[milk] => 5ml
[water] => 5ml
[carrots] => 3pcs
)
Now, to get the quantity for any item, you can directly do echo $second_slice['item_name'].
And if you wanted to find the name of the quantity from the amount, you can use array_search():
$searchFor = '3pcs';
echo array_search($searchFor, $second_slice);
Outputs:
carrots
If there are multiple quantities with the same amount, the above method only returns the first. If you want to get all of them, you can use array_filter():
$result = array_filter($second_slice, function($elem) use ($searchFor){
return ($elem == $searchFor);
});
print_r($result);
Output:
Array
(
[milk] => 5ml
[water] => 5ml
)

Answer 2

You just want to output 5ml milk? Because if so, simply do the following:
echo $first_slice[0];

Answer 3

There is a hidden whitespace problem, but you can easily fix it with the following code by using trim:
$sample = '5ml milk, 5ml water, 3pcs carrots';
echo $sample."</br>";
$first_slice = explode(',',$sample);
foreach($first_slice as $key => $value)
{
$second_slice[$key] = explode(' ',trim($value));
}
print_r($second_slice);
which produces the following array:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => 5ml
[1] => milk
)
[1] => Array
(
[0] => 5ml
[1] => water
)
[2] => Array
(
[0] => 3pcs
[1] => carrots
)
)

Answer 4

there are a few ways you can achieve this. Here is one way:
$sample = '5ml milk, 5ml water, 3pcs carrots';
$items = explode(",", $sample);
$final = array();
foreach($items as $i){
$value = explode(" ", trim($i));
$final[$value[1]] = $value[0];
}
echo "<pre>";
print_r($final);
echo "</pre>";

Answer 5

If you want to echo "5ml milk":
echo $second_slice[0][0] . " " . $second_slice[0][1];
echo "5ml water";
echo $second_slice[1][0] . " " . $second_slice[1][1];
echo "3pcs carrots";
echo $second_slice[2][0] . " " . $second_slice[2][1];