PHP get key of parent array

Question

My array is built in this format:

$my_array = array(
     1 => array('Pizza','9.99','New_York'),
     2 => array('Chicken Wok','12.49','New_Jersey'),
    ...
);

Then I fetch a database which contains meals.

How can I get the corresponding key of $my_array by knowing only the meal (e.g. my DB contains 'Chicken Wok' and I need to be able to get '2' as the key)?

Please note that I cannot change the structure of $my_array.

jszobody · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-16 18:12:11Z

4

Anything wrong with just doing a foreach loop?

foreach($my_array AS $key => $meal) {
    if($meal[0] == "Chicken Wok") echo "The key is: $key";
}

answered Nov 16, 2013 at 18:12

jszobody

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3 Comments

Adam Strudwick Over a year ago

I thought there might be a more efficient way of doing it, performance-wise (my array contains about 100 lines and I'm fetching about 20 entries in the DB)

jszobody Over a year ago

PHP can loop through arrays very efficiently, I don't think it should be a concern. The simple solutions are usually the best.

jszobody Over a year ago

You could get fancy and write a recursive function that uses array_search(), but ultimately you're still looping through your array until you find a match, it won't save you anything.

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