PHP Array iteration Iterating multiple arrays together
Example
Sometimes two arrays of the same length need to be iterated together, for example:
$people = ['Tim', 'Tony', 'Turanga'];
$foods = ['chicken', 'beef', 'slurm'];
array_map is the simplest way to accomplish this:
array_map(function($person, $food) {
return "$person likes $food\n";
}, $people, $foods);
which will output:
Tim likes chicken
Tony likes beef
Turanga likes slurm
This can be done through a common index:
assert(count($people) === count($foods));
for ($i = 0; $i < count($people); $i++) {
echo "$people[$i] likes $foods[$i]\n";
}
If the two arrays don't have the incremental keys, array_values($array)[$i] can be used to replace $array[$i].
If both arrays have the same order of keys, you can also use a foreach-with-key loop on one of the arrays:
foreach ($people as $index => $person) {
$food = $foods[$index];
echo "$person likes $food\n";
}
Separate arrays can only be looped through if they are the same length and also have the same key name. This means if you don't supply a key and they are numbered, you will be fine, or if you name the keys and put them in the same order in each array.
You can also use array_combine.
$combinedArray = array_combine($people, $foods);
// $combinedArray = ['Tim' => 'chicken', 'Tony' => 'beef', 'Turanga' => 'slurm'];
Then you can loop through this by doing the same as before:
foreach ($combinedArray as $person => $meal) {
echo "$person likes $meal\n";
}
