Replace values in associative array

Question

I'm consuming an API which returns an array of objects as this:

$base = array(
    ["orange","_","banana"], 
    ["banana","_","_"], 
    ["_","apple","kiwi"], 
    ["_","raspberry","strawberry"]
);

And I intend to show "0" when key value is "_" however I haven't found a better way to do this than this:

foreach ($base as $key => $value) {
    for ($i=0; $i<=3;$i++) {
        if ($base[$key][$i]=="_")
            $base[$key][$i]="0";
    }
}

This works just fine since it's a simple demo but the real array is sometimes big and I've found this solution somewhat inefficient.

My question is, there's some php built-in function to do achieve this in or at least a better way to do this?

Thanks in advance guys,

That's not an associative array. That's an indexed arrays that contains other indexed arrays (multidimensional array). So when you say: when key value is "_", it doesn't really make sense, since all keys in your arrays are numeric. — M. Eriksson
– M. Eriksson, Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 9:50

Qirel · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-24 09:53:21Z

2

Use array_walk_recursive(), pass the elements by reference and walk over the array, checking for the value _ - if its a match, replace it with 0.

$base = array(
    ["orange","_","banana"], 
    ["banana","_","_"], 
    ["_","apple","kiwi"], 
    ["_","raspberry","strawberry"]
);

array_walk_recursive($base, function(&$v) {
    if ($v === '_')
        $v = 0;
});

Output becomes

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => orange
            [1] => 0
            [2] => banana
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => banana
            [1] => 0
            [2] => 0
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => 0
            [1] => apple
            [2] => kiwi
        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => 0
            [1] => raspberry
            [2] => strawberry
        )

)

Live demo at https://3v4l.org/6Bs8ZE

answered Mar 24, 2020 at 9:53

Qirel

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1 Comment

Chrishow Over a year ago

Holy smokes...array_walk_recursive where have you been all of my life! Neat and works like a charm! Thank you very much Qirel

LF-DevJourney · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-24 09:57:03Z

2

You can replace _ with 0;

json_decode(str_replace('"_"','"0"',json_encode($base)));

answered Mar 24, 2020 at 9:57

LF-DevJourney

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2 Comments

Chrishow Over a year ago

This seemed like a great solution and made a lot of sense to me but didn't work :(

Chrishow Over a year ago

Your answer was correct, sorry. My mistake is that I didn't realized until now that I also needed a solution to replace not only "_" but "". Hence I had to use the other variant involving walk the array entirely. Thank you for you help Kris.

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