Access Multidimensional Array element with out knowing parent elements

Question

I have function that returns the following multidimensional array. I don\'t have control of how the array is formed. Im trying to access the \'Result\' elements. This issue

Answer 1

If the parent elements have only one child, you can solve it by getting the only element given back by array_keys(), and going two levels deep.

Anyway, if your array changes that much, and you systematically have to access a nested property, you have a design issue for sure.

Answer 2

function findkeyval($arr,$key) {
    if(isset($arr[$key])) {
        return $arr[$key];
    }else {
        foreach($arr as $a) {
            if(is_array($a)) {
                $val=findkeyval($a,$key);
                if($val) {
                   return $val;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

Edit: array_column won't actually work in this case. You could search through each level, recursively, until you find the given key. Something like:

function find_key_value($array, $search_key) {
    if (isset($array[$search_key])) return $array[$search_key];
    $found = false;
    foreach ($array as $key=>$value) {
         if (is_array($value)) $found = find_key_value($value, $search_key);
         if ($found) return $found; 
    }
    return false;
}

Answer 4

An easy option to search the array keys/values recursively is to use a recursive iterator; these are built-in classes, part of the Standard PHP Library.

$result   = false;
$iterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveArrayIterator($array));
foreach ($iterator as $key => $value) {
    if ($key === 'Result') {
        $result = $value;
        break;
    }
}

var_dump($result);

The bonus here is that you could, if you wanted to, check the depth of the Result item ($iterator->getDepth()) in the array structure and/or check one or more ancestor keys ($iterator->getSubIterator(…)->key()).