Displaying an array inside an array? - php

Question

I have an array inside an array and I'd like to simply print out the contents of it... the problem is what I'm trying doesn't work... ie
foreach($retval as $k=>$v){
if (is_array($v)){
foreach($v as $l=>$w){
echo $l . ' = ' . $w . '<br />';
}
} else {
echo $k . ' = ' . $v . '<br />';
}
Doing that however I end up with:
id = 2
name = Speakers
form_field = hidden
display_order = 0
groups = Array
So I'm not getting a foreach in that inside array.. what am I doing wrong? It seems actually that my code believes everything return is an array when I'm pretty sure that only 'groups' is an array.
the structure of the array looks like so:
array ( 0 => array ( 'id' => 2, 'name' => 'Speakers', 'form_field' => 'hidden', 'display_order' => '0', 'groups' => array ( 0 => array ( 'bit' => '1', 'name' => 'don', 'display_order' => '4', 'subscribers' => 8, ), 1 => array ( 'bit' => '2', 'name' => 'tyler', 'display_order' => '5', 'subscribers' => 0, ), 2 => array ( 'bit' => '4', 'name' => 'stephen', 'display_order' => '6', 'subscribers' => 0, ), 3 => array ( 'bit' => '8', 'name' => 'daniel', 'display_order' => '7', 'subscribers' => 0, ), 4 => array ( 'bit' => '16', 'name' => 'william', 'display_order' => '8', 'subscribers' => 0, ), 5 => array ( 'bit' => '32', 'name' => 'bobbys', 'display_order' => '9', 'subscribers' => 0, ), ), ), )
Long story short, I'm actually just trying to search this whole thing for say the name 'bobby' and get a simple true or false on whether that value exists anywhere in there.

Answer 1

print_r($myArray);
PHP Manual
<?php
$a = array ('a' => 'apple', 'b' => 'banana', 'c' => array ('x', 'y', 'z'));
print_r ($a);
?>
would give:
Array
(
[a] => apple
[b] => banana
[c] => Array
(
[0] => x
[1] => y
[2] => z
)
)
Not sure if this is what you are looking for...
print_r() gives you a visual representation while var_export() returns valid, executable php code. Manual: var_export()

Answer 2

You're assuming that arrays are only doubly-nested, when $retval[<something>]['groups'] is also an array. Use recursion to handle this instead of just adding levels upon levels.

Answer 3

It sounds like you need to reconsider what you are trying to do.
If you just want to see what is in your array so that you know how to get at a particular piece of data, then you're probabaly after print_r, var_export or similar as mentioned above.
print_r($retval);
If you want your php script to be able to work out on it's own whether 'bobby' is in the array, then you might have some more information that will help your search. For example, do you know the structure of your array and that you're searching for a name? If so, then you only need to check the strings that are in $array[$foo]['name']. You could adapt your code like so:
foreach($retval as $k=>$v) {
if ($v['name'] == 'bobby') {
echo "Bobby is at index $k";
}
}
PHP contains lots of functions for arrays, although these tend to be for single-dimension arrays.
P.S. Please edit the structure of your array to make it easier to read.

Answer 4

If your goal is to understand if a value is in any nested array you can do this:
foreach($retval as $vec){
if(in_array("bobby", $vec)
do something

Answer 5

Use a RecursiveArrayIterator wrapped in RecursiveIteratorIterator. The syntax will then be:
$arr = array('this is your complicated multi-dimensional array');
$iterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveArrayIterator($arr));
foreach($iterator as $key => $value){
echo '['.$key.'] => '.$value.'<br />';
}
You can even use $iterator->depth() to determine the depth of a current element.