php Checking if value exists in array of array

Question

I have an array within an array.

$a = array ( 0 => array ( \'value\' => \'America\', ), 1 => array ( \'value\' => \'England\', ), )

Answer 1

A general solution would be:

function deep_in_array($needle, $haystack) {
    if(in_array($needle, $haystack)) {
        return true;
    }
    foreach($haystack as $element) {
        if(is_array($element) && deep_in_array($needle, $element))
            return true;
    }
    return false;
}

The reason why I chose to use in_array and a loop is: Before I examine deeper levels of the array structure, I make sure, that the searched value is not in the current level. This way, I hope the code to be faster than doing some kind of depth-first search method.

---

Of course if your array is always 2 dimensional and you only want to search in this kind of arrays, then this is faster:

function in_2d_array($needle, $haystack) {
    foreach($haystack as $element) {
        if(in_array($needle, $element))
            return true;
    }
    return false;
}

Answer 2

PHP doesn't have a native array_search_recursive() function, but you can define one:

function array_search_recursive($needle, $haystack) {
    foreach ($haystack as $value) {
        if (is_array($value) && array_search_recursive($needle, $value)) return true;
        else if ($value == $needle) return true;
    }
    return false;
}

Untested but you get the idea.

Answer 3

function search($a,$searchval){  //$a - array; $searchval - search value;
if(is_array($a)) {
foreach($a as $val){ 
if(is_array($val))
if(in_array($searchval,$val)) return true;  
}
}
else return false;
}

search($a, 'America'); //function call