Recursively add to an array - php

Question

I'm struggling to understand a problem that i've got with recursion where by I am traversing down a hiearchy in only one direction and adding all the children of each parent to an array.
However I can't quite work out the best way to continuously add to that array while using recursion.
Here is what my function looks like so far. I'd appreciate it hugely if someone could push me in the right direction with this.
function getTaxChildrenList($cat, $data){
$next = get_terms('location_types', 'orderby=count&hide_empty=0&parent='.$cat);
if(count($next)){
$result = array();
foreach($next as $next_key => $next_level){
$result[$next_level->term_id] = $this->getTaxChildrenList($next_level->term_id, $result);
}
}
return $result;
}
I now have the structure being returned as I want but need to actually add the objects of each of these children to the key which i'm guessing might be my base case.
Screenshot -> http://cl.ly/image/1z1v2S243f3H

Answer 1

So perhaps you need something like this:
function getTaxChildrenList($cat){
$next = get_terms('location_types', 'orderby=count&hide_empty=0&parent='.$cat);
$result = array();
if(count($next)){
foreach($next as $next_key => $next_level){
$result[$next_level->term_id] =
array("data" => $next_level->something,
"children" => $this->getTaxChildrenList($next_level->term_id));
}
}
return $result;
}
Is it something like that?

Answer 2

This should do the job
function getTaxChildrenList($cat) { //no second parameter
$next = get_terms('location_types', 'orderby=count&hide_empty=0&parent='.$cat);
$result = array();
//base case would be count($next) == 0
if(count($next)){
foreach($next as $next_level){
//add recursively arrays
$recur = $this->getTaxChildrenList($next_level->term_id);
if(count($recur) == 0)
$result[$next_level->term_id] = $next_level;
else
$result[$next_level->term_id] = $recur;
}
}
return $result;
}