How to “flatten” a multi-dimensional array to simple one in PHP?

Question

It\'s probably beginner question but I\'m going through documentation for longer time already and I can\'t find any solution. I thought I could use implode for each dimensio

Answer 1

Sorry for necrobumping, but none of the provided answers did what I intuitively understood as "flattening a multidimensional array". Namely this case:

[
  'a' => [
    'b' => 'value',
  ]
]

all of the provided solutions would flatten it into just ['value'], but that loses information about the key and the depth, plus if you have another 'b' key somewhere else, it will overwrite them.

I wanted to get a result like this:

[
  'a_b' => 'value',
]

array_walk_recursive doesn't pass the information about the key it's currently recursing, so I did it with just plain recursion:

function flatten($array, $prefix = '') {
    $return = [];
    foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
        if (is_array($value)) {
            $return = array_merge($return, flatten($value, $prefix . $key . '_'));
        } else {
            $return[$prefix . $key] = $value;
        }
    }
    return $return;
}

Modify the $prefix and '_' separator to your liking.

Playground here: https://3v4l.org/0B8hf

Answer 2

/*consider $mArray as multidimensional array and $sArray as single dimensional array
this code will ignore the parent array
*/

function flatten_array2($mArray) {
    $sArray = array();

    foreach ($mArray as $row) {
        if ( !(is_array($row)) ) {
            if($sArray[] = $row){
            }
        } else {
            $sArray = array_merge($sArray,flatten_array2($row));
        }
    }
    return $sArray;
}

Answer 3

// $array = your multidimensional array

$flat_array = array();

foreach(new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveArrayIterator($array)) as $k=>$v){

$flat_array[$k] = $v;

}

Also documented: http://www.phpro.org/examples/Flatten-Array.html

Answer 4

any of this didnt work for me ... so had to run it myself. works just fine:

function arrayFlat($arr){
$out = '';
    foreach($arr as $key => $value){

        if(!is_array($value)){
            $out .= $value.',';
        }else{
            $out .= $key.',';
            $out .= arrayFlat($value);
        }

    }
    return trim($out,',');
}


$result = explode(',',arrayFlat($yourArray));
echo '<pre>';
print_r($result);
echo '</pre>';

Answer 5

Simple approach..See it via recursion..

<?php

function flatten_array($simple){
static $outputs=array();
foreach ( $simple as $value)
{
if(is_array($value)){
    flatten_array($value);
}
else{
    $outputs[]=$value;
}

}
return $outputs;
}

$eg=['s'=>['p','n'=>['t']]];
$out=flatten_array($eg);
print_r($out);

?>

Answer 6

you can try this:

function flat_an_array($a)
{
    foreach($a as $i)
    {
        if(is_array($i)) 
        {
            if($na) $na = array_merge($na,flat_an_array($i));
            else $na = flat_an_array($i);
        }
        else $na[] = $i;
    }
    return $na;
}