Move an array element to a new index in PHP

Question

I\'m looking for a simple function to move an array element to a new position in the array and resequence the indexes so that there are no gaps in the sequence. It doesnt ne

Answer 1

The solution from hakre with two array_splice commands doesn't work with named arrays. The key of the moved element will be lost.

Instead you can splice the array two times and merge the parts.

function moveElement(&$array, $a, $b) {
    $p1 = array_splice($array, $a, 1);
    $p2 = array_splice($array, 0, $b);
    $array = array_merge($p2,$p1,$array);
}

How does it work:

• First: remove/splice the element from the array
• Second: splice the array into two parts at the position you want to insert the element
• Merge the three parts together

Example:

$fruits = array(
    'bananas'=>'12', 
    'apples'=>'23',
    'tomatoes'=>'21', 
    'nuts'=>'22',
    'foo'=>'a',
    'bar'=>'b'
);

moveElement($fruits, 1, 3);

// Result
['bananas'=>'12', 'tomatoes'=>'21', 'nuts'=>'22', 'apples'=>'23', 'foo'=>'a', 'bar'=>'b']