[php] PHP Remove elements from associative array

I have an PHP array that looks something like this:

Index              Key     Value
[0]                1       Awaiting for Confirmation
[1]                2       Assigned
[2]                3       In Progress
[3]                4       Completed
[4]                5       Mark As Spam

When I var_dump the array values i get this:

array(5) { [0]=> array(2) { ["key"]=> string(1) "1" ["value"]=> string(25) "Awaiting for Confirmation" } [1]=> array(2) { ["key"]=> string(1) "2" ["value"]=> string(9) "Assigned" } [2]=> array(2) { ["key"]=> string(1) "3" ["value"]=> string(11) "In Progress" } [3]=> array(2) { ["key"]=> string(1) "4" ["value"]=> string(9) "Completed" } [4]=> array(2) { ["key"]=> string(1) "5" ["value"]=> string(12) "Mark As Spam" } }

I wanted to remove Completed and Mark As Spam. I know I can unset[$array[3],$array[4]), but the problem is that sometimes the index number can be different.

Is there a way to remove them by matching the value name instead of the key value?

I kinda disagree with the accepted answer. Sometimes an application architecture doesn't want you to mess with the array id, or makes it inconvenient. For instance, I use CakePHP quite a lot, and a database query returns the primary key as a value in each record, very similar to the above.

Assuming the array is not stupidly large, I would use array_filter. This will create a copy of the array, minus the records you want to remove, which you can assign back to the original array variable.

Although this may seem inefficient it's actually very much in vogue these days to have variables be immutable, and the fact that most php array functions return a new array rather than futzing with the original implies that PHP kinda wants you to do this too. And the more you work with arrays, and realize how difficult and annoying the unset() function is, this approach makes a lot of sense.

Anyway:

$my_array = array_filter($my_array, 
                         function($el) { 
                            return $el["value"]!="Completed" && $el!["value"]!="Marked as Spam"; 
                         });

You can use whatever inclusion logic (eg. your id field) in the embedded function that you want.

Try this:

$keys = array_keys($array, "Completed");

/edit As mentioned by JohnP, this method only works for non-nested arrays.

for single array Item use reset($item)

$key = array_search("Mark As Spam", $array);
unset($array[$key]);

For 2D arrays...

$remove = array("Mark As Spam", "Completed");
foreach($arrays as $array){
    foreach($array as $key => $value){
        if(in_array($value, $remove)) unset($array[$key]);
    }
}

  ...

  $array = array(
      1 => 'Awaiting for Confirmation', 
      2 => 'Asssigned', 
      3 => 'In Progress', 
      4 => 'Completed', 
      5 => 'Mark As Spam', 
  );



  return array_values($array);
  ...

You can use this

unset($dataArray['key']);

Why do not use array_diff?

$array = array(
    1 => 'Awaiting for Confirmation', 
    2 => 'Asssigned', 
    3 => 'In Progress', 
    4 => 'Completed', 
    5 => 'Mark As Spam', 
);
$to_delete = array('Completed', 'Mark As Spam');
$array = array_diff($array, $to_delete);

Just note that your array would be reindexed.

The way to do this to take your nested target array and copy it in single step to a non-nested array. Delete the key(s) and then assign the final trimmed array to the nested node of the earlier array. Here is a code to make it simple:

$temp_array = $list['resultset'][0];

unset($temp_array['badkey1']);
unset($temp_array['badkey2']);

$list['resultset'][0] = $temp_array;