PHP Manipulating an Array Whitelist only some array keys

Help us to keep this website almost Ad Free! It takes only 10 seconds of your time:
> Step 1: Go view our video on YouTube: EF Core Bulk Extensions
> Step 2: And Like the video. BONUS: You can also share it!

Example

When you want to allow only certain keys in your arrays, especially when the array comes from request parameters, you can use array_intersect_key together with array_flip.

$parameters = ['foo' => 'bar', 'bar' => 'baz', 'boo' => 'bam'];
$allowedKeys = ['foo', 'bar'];
$filteredParameters = array_intersect_key($parameters, array_flip($allowedKeys));

// $filteredParameters contains ['foo' => 'bar', 'bar' => 'baz]

If the parameters variable doesn't contain any allowed key, then the filteredParameters variable will consist of an empty array.

Since PHP 5.6 you can use array_filter for this task too, passing the ARRAY_FILTER_USE_KEY flag as the third parameter:

$parameters  = ['foo' => 1, 'hello' => 'world'];
$allowedKeys = ['foo', 'bar'];
$filteredParameters = array_filter(
    $parameters,
    function ($key) use ($allowedKeys) {
        return in_array($key, $allowedKeys);
    },
    ARRAY_FILTER_USE_KEY
);

Using array_filter gives the additional flexibility of performing an arbitrary test against the key, e.g. $allowedKeys could contain regex patterns instead of plain strings. It also more explicitly states the intention of the code than array_intersect_key() combined with array_flip().



Got any PHP Question?