PHP how to search multidimensional array with key and value

To handle searching a multidimensional array, you can use either the foreach statement or the array_search() function.

A PHP multidimensional array can be searched to see if it has a certain value.

Let’s see an example of performing the search. Suppose you have a multidimensional array with the following structure:

$users = [
    [
        "uid" => "111",
        "name" => "Nathan",
        "age" => 29,
    ],
    [
        "uid" => "254",
        "name" => "Jessie",
        "age" => 25,
    ],
    [
        "uid" => "305",
        "name" => "Michael",
        "age" => 30,
    ],
];

To search the array by its value, you can use the foreach statement.

You need to loop over the array and see if one of the child arrays has a specific value.

For example, suppose you want to get the array with the uid value of 111:

$id = "111";
foreach ($users as $k => $v) {
    if ($v["uid"] === $id) {
        print $users[$k];
    }
}

Note that the comparison operator in the code above uses triple equal ===.

This means the type of compared values must be the same.

The code above will produce the following output:

Array
(
    [uid] => 111
    [name] => Nathan
    [age] => 29
)

In PHP 5.5 and above, you can also use the array_search() function combined with the array_column() function to find an array that matches a condition.

See the example below:

$name = "Michael";
$key = array_search($name, array_column($users, "name"));
print_r($users[$key]);

The above code will produce the following output:

Array
(
    [uid] => 305
    [name] => Michael
    [age] => 30
)

Let’s create a custom function from the search code so that you can perform a more dynamic search based on key and value.

This custom function accepts three parameters:

The key you want to search
The value you want the key to have
The array you want to search

The function can be written as follows:

function find_array($name, $value, $array) {
    $key = array_search($name, array_column($array, $value));
    return $array[$key];
}

To handle a case where the specific value is not found, you need to add an if condition to the function.

You can return false or null when the $key is not found:

function find_array($k, $v, $array) {
    $key = array_search($v, array_column($array, $k));
    // 👇 key is found, return the array
    if ($key !== false) {
        return $array[$key];
    }
    // 👇 key is not found, return false
    return false;
}

Now you can use the find_array() function anytime you need to search a multidimensional array.

Here are some examples:

// 👇 value exists
$result = find_array("name", "Jessie", $users);
if ($result) {
    print_r($result);
} else {
    print "Array with that value is not found!";
}

// 👇 value doesn't exists
$result = find_array("uid", "1000", $users);
if ($result) {
    print_r($result);
} else {
    print "Array with that value is not found!";
}

The code above will produce the following output:

Array
(
    [uid] => 254
    [name] => Jessie
    [age] => 25
)
Array with that value is not found!

Now you’ve learned how to search a multidimensional array in PHP.

When you need to find an array with specific values, you only need to call the find_array() function above.

Feel free to use the function in your PHP project. 👍

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