PHP in_array function doesn't find value

Question

I have this PHP variable:

$values = $response->getValues();

That print this array:

Array ( [0] => Array ( [0] => 16777439-3 ) [1] => Array ( [0] => 17425847-3 ) )

Then I have this code to find a value inside of that array:

if (in_array("16777439-3", $values)) {

    echo "Is in array";

}else{

    echo "Isn't in array";

}

But all the time it returns " Isn't in array "

Also I've tried to convert my original variable with:

$array2 = json_decode(json_encode($values), true);

But also I'm getting the same return.

Answer 1

Your values array looks like this:

[
  0 => [
         0 => "16777439-3"
       ],
  1 => [
         0 => "17425847-3"
       ]
]

Your top level elements are arrays themselves. in_array can't do a nested search like this. It would only work if your array was just

[
  0 => "16777439-3"
  1 => "17425847-3"
]

Either change your structure to not use a nested array, or implement a custom search function:

function custom_in_array($search, $haystack){
    foreach($haystack as $key => $value)
    {
        if(in_array($search, $value))
            return true;
    }

    return false;
}

Answer 2

$values is an array of arrays, not an array of strings.

To illustrate, try:

if (in_array("16777439-3", $values[0] )) {

    echo "Is in array";

}else{

    echo "Isn't in array";

}

You'll have to to some processing to convert $response->getValues() into an array of strings

Answer 3

You have a multi-dimensional array, so just extract the 0 columns with array_column :

if (in_array("16777439-3", array_column($values, 0))) {
    echo "Is in array";
} else {
    echo "Isn't in array";
}

Or flatten the array with array_merge :

if (in_array("16777439-3", array_merge(...$array))) {
    echo "Is in array";
} else {
    echo "Isn't in array";
}

Also, checking if an index isset is faster, so you can just re-index on the 0 value and check if that index is set:

if (isset(array_column($values, null, 0)["16777439-3"])) {
    echo "Is in array";
} else {
    echo "Isn't in array";
}