Searching for duplicates in multidimensional array PHP - php

Question

I have a multidimensional PHP array looking like this in JSON:
array = [{
"id":"1",
"key":"Ferrari",
"type":"car"},
{
"id":"1",
"key":"Red",
"type":"color"},
{
"id":"73",
"key":"Yellow",
"type":"color"
}]
Because it's actually a search result, I would like to, dynamically combine the results where the id's are the same. In other words the new array should look like:
array = [{
"id":"1",
"key":"Red Ferrari",
"type":"keyword"},
{
"id":"73",
"key":"Yellow",
"type":"color"
}]
I have been looking at a lot of PHP functions, but they have a limited functionality, in multidimensional arrays. Any suggestions are appreciated :)
Many Regards
Andreas

Answer 1

There's no base functions to do as specific thing as you mention. So you can make something like this:
print_r(my_array_merge($data));
function my_array_merge($data)
{
// sort all records by id to merge them later
$data_by_id = array();
foreach ($data as $item)
{
if (!isset($data_by_id[ $item['id'] ])) {
$data_by_id[ $item['id'] ] = array();
}
$data_by_id[ $item['id'] ][] = $item;
}
// merge records with same id
$return = array();
foreach ($data_by_id as $id => $items)
{
foreach ($items as $item)
{
if (!isset($return[ $id ])) {
$return[ $id ] = $item;
} else {
$return[ $id ]['key'] .= ' ' . $item['key'];
$return[ $id ]['type'] = 'keyword'; // I don't really get what you mean by 'keyword'
}
}
}
// reset keys before return
return array_values($return);
}