How to “flatten” a multi-dimensional array to simple one in PHP?

Question

It\'s probably beginner question but I\'m going through documentation for longer time already and I can\'t find any solution. I thought I could use implode for each dimensio

Answer 1

A new approach based on the previous example function submited by chaos, which fixes the bug of overwritting string keys in multiarrays:

# Flatten a multidimensional array to one dimension, optionally preserving keys.
# $array - the array to flatten
# $preserve_keys - 0 (default) to not preserve keys, 1 to preserve string keys only, 2 to preserve all keys
# $out - internal use argument for recursion

function flatten_array($array, $preserve_keys = 2, &$out = array(), &$last_subarray_found) 
{
        foreach($array as $key => $child)
        {
            if(is_array($child))
            {
                $last_subarray_found = $key;
                $out = flatten_array($child, $preserve_keys, $out, $last_subarray_found);
            }
            elseif($preserve_keys + is_string($key) > 1)
            {
                if ($last_subarray_found)
                {
                    $sfinal_key_value = $last_subarray_found . "_" . $key;
                }
                else
                {
                    $sfinal_key_value = $key;
                }
                $out[$sfinal_key_value] = $child;
            }
            else
            {
                $out[] = $child;
            }
        }

        return $out;
}

Example:
$newarraytest = array();
$last_subarray_found = "";
$this->flatten_array($array, 2, $newarraytest, $last_subarray_found);