PHP - Array Search Not Returning Anything

Question

Currently working on a project in C but I have to generate a large struct which I figured would generate in PHP since I'm more familiar with PHP.

I have 2 arrays. The first one is quite simple (is way larger than this but I assume this is enough to replicate the issue):

$vehicles = [
    'vehicleSuper' => [ "adder", "autarch", "banshee2", "bullet"  ],
    'vehicleSport' => [ "alpha", "banshee", "bestiagts", "blista2" ],
    //...
];

The second array looks like this:

$textures = [
    'candc_apartments' => [
        "limo2_b", "limo2",
    ],
    'candc_default' => [
        "marshall_flag18_b", "mesa_b", "rentbus", "marshall_flag21_b", "crusader", "boxville4", "buzzard_b", "dukes2_b", "dukes",
    ],
    'lgm_default' => [
        "hotknife", "coquette", "voltic_tless", "vacca", "infernus", "cogcabri_b", "stinger_b", "banshee_b", "ztype", "ninef", "jb700", "superd", "monroe_b", "rapidgt2_b", "khamel", "comet2_b", "cheetah_b", "rapidgt_b", "stinger", "carbon_b", "surano_convertable_b", "rapidgt2", "infernus_b", "jb700_b", "ninef_b", "stingerg", "superd_b", "bullet_b", "ztype_b", "hotknife_b", "cogcabri", "surano_convertable", "rapidgt", "stingerg_b", "coquette_b", "bullet", "carbon", "ninef2", "carboniz", "cheetah", "adder_b", "entityxf", "adder", "feltzer",
    ],
];

Now I generate the list like this using the 2 arrays above:

echo '<pre>';

foreach($vehicles as $category => $val) {
    echo "vehicleSpawner " . $category . "[] = {\n";
    foreach($val as $item) {
        echo "  { \"" . $item . "\", \"" . array_search($item, array_column($textures, $item)) . "\", \"\" },\n";
    }
    echo '}';
echo '<hr>';
}

This outputs something similar to:

{ "adder", "", "" },

The last 2 values are empty. What I want to achieve: Fill these out with the values from $textures array. In this case, I'm trying to fill it up like this:

// arg 1: name from $vehicles
// arg 2: key from $textures
// arg 3: val from $textures
{ "adder", "lgm_default", "adder" },

Currently my array_search($item, array_column($textures, $item)) method doesn't seem to work. How would I go and get this working? Help is appreciated, thanks all!

Answer 1

array_column($textures, $item) will search in array $textures key named $item , but there is no key with that name so it returns false, what you need to do is loop on $textures array and search if value $item exists:

foreach($val as $item) {
    foreach($textures as $k => $v) {
        //this will return array index or false if not exists
        $pos = array_search($item, $v);
        if ( $pos !== false )
            echo "  { \"" . $item . "\", \"" . $k . "\", \"".$v[$pos]."\" },\n";
    }
}

Answer 2

If you want to see multiple matches within a given pair of subarrays, array_intersect() will compare both subarrays once and iterate the results. This is more efficient than running fresh array_search() calls for each element of one of the subarrays.

Code: ( Demo )

foreach($vehicles as $category => $v_vals) {
    echo "vehicleSpawner " . $category . "[] = {\n";
    foreach($textures as $k => $t_vals) {
        foreach (array_intersect($v_vals, $t_vals) as $match) {
            echo "  { \"$match\", \"$k\", \"$match\" },\n";
        }
    }
    echo "}\n";
}

Output:

vehicleSpawner vehicleSuper[] = {
  { "adder", "lgm_default", "adder" },
  { "bullet", "lgm_default", "bullet" },
}
vehicleSpawner vehicleSport[] = {
}

If this isn't the exact output format/structure that you desire, it can be tweaked to accommodate.