Convert an array of strings, each string has dot separated values, to a multidimensional array in php

✔ Recommended Answer

This code uses a function from this answer to do what you're looking for.

<?php$test = Array(    0 => 'INBOX.Trash',    1 => 'INBOX.Sent',    2 => 'INBOX.Drafts',    3 => 'INBOX.Test.sub folder',    4 => 'INBOX.Test.sub folder.test 2',);$output = array();foreach($test as $element){    assignArrayByPath($output, $element);   }debug($output);function assignArrayByPath(&$arr, $path) {    $keys = explode('.', $path);        while ($key = array_shift($keys)) {        $arr = &$arr[$key];    }}function debug($arr){    echo "<pre>";    print_r($arr);    echo "</pre>";}

Source: stackoverflow.com

Answered By: Ankit

Method #2

To convert an array of dot-separated strings to a multidimensional array in PHP, you can use the following code:

php
function dotToMultiArray($array) {
    $result = array();

    foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
        $keys = explode('.', $key);
        $ref = &$result;

        while (count($keys) > 1) {
            $currentKey = array_shift($keys);

            if (!isset($ref[$currentKey])) {
                $ref[$currentKey] = array();
            }

            $ref = &$ref[$currentKey];
        }

        $ref[array_shift($keys)] = $value;
    }

    return $result;
}

This function takes an associative array with dot-separated keys and converts it into a multidimensional array. The keys of the input array represent the dot-separated values, and the values represent the corresponding values of the multidimensional array.

Here's an example usage:

php
$input = array(
    'first.second.third' => 'value1',
    'first.fourth' => 'value2',
    'fifth' => 'value3'
);

$output = dotToMultiArray($input);

print_r($output);

The output will be:

csharp
Array
(
    [first] => Array
        (
            [second] => Array
                (
                    [third] => value1
                )

            [fourth] => value2
        )

    [fifth] => value3
)

This function uses a reference to the current level of the multidimensional array in order to create the nested arrays. It also uses array_shift to remove the first key of the dot-separated string and isset to check if the nested array exists.