Replace string in an array with PHP

Question

How can I replace a sub string with some other string for all items of an array in PHP?

I don\'t want to use a loop to do it. Is there a predefined function in PHP t

Answer 1

I am not sure how efficient this is, but I wanted to replace strings in a big multidimensional array and did not want to loop through all items as the array structure is pretty dynamic.

I first json_encode the array into a string.

Replace all the strings I want (need to use preg_replace if there are non-English characters that get encoded by json_encode).

json_decode to get the array back.

Answer 2

With array_walk_recursive()

function replace_array_recursive( string $needle, string $replace, array &$haystack ){
    array_walk_recursive($haystack,
        function (&$item, $key, $data){
        $item = str_replace( $data['needle'], $data['replace'], $item );
        return $item;
    },
        [ 'needle' => $needle, 'replace' => $replace ]
    );
}

Answer 3

This is a very good idea that I found and used successfully:

function str_replace_json($search, $replace, $subject) 
{
    return json_decode(str_replace($search, $replace, json_encode($subject)), true);
}

It is good also for multidimensional arrays.

If you change the "true" to "false" then it will return an object instead of an associative array.

Source: Codelinks

Answer 4

function my_replace_array($array,$key,$val){
    for($i=0;$i<count($array);$i++){
        if(is_array($array[$i])){
            $array[$i] = my_replace_array($array[$i],$key,$val);
        }else{
            $array[$i]=str_replace($key,$val,$array[$i]);
        }
    }
    return $array;
}

Answer 5

$array = array_map(
    function($str) {
        return str_replace('foo', 'bar', $str);
    },
    $array
);

But array_map is just a hidden loop. Why not use a real one?

foreach ($array as &$str) {
    $str = str_replace('foo', 'bar', $str);
}

That's much easier.

Answer 6

Why not just use str_replace without a loop?

$array = array('foobar', 'foobaz');
$out = str_replace('foo', 'hello', $array);