Array of inner most values in associative array in PHP

Question

I have an Array of the form-
$description: array(2)
  0: array(2)
    0: 
       name: john
       age: 10
    1: 
       name: mary
       age: 15
  1: array(2)
    0: 
       name: mark
       age: 12
    1: 
       name: susan
       age: 8

What I'm looking for ultimately is an array of only the ages of all four.

age: array(10,15,12,8)

Can this be achieved without using a foreach loop? I tried a mix of array_column and array_values but somehow I get the same array back.

Answer 1

An example by flattening the array and then mapping the array.

<?php

$array = [
    [
        ['name' => 'john',  'age' => 10,],
        ['name' => 'mary', 'age' => 15,],
    ],
    [
        ['name' => 'mark',  'age' => 12,],
        ['name' => 'susan', 'age' => 8,],
    ]
];

$flatten_array = array_merge(...$array);

$output = array_map(function ($item) {
    return $item['age'];
}, $flatten_array);

var_dump($output);

Answer 2

You may use array_walk to do that

$array = [
    [
        [
            'name' => 'john',
            'age' => 10,
        ],
        [
            'name' => 'marry',
            'age' => 15,
        ]
    ],
    [
        [
            'name' => 'mark',
            'age' => 12,
        ],
        [
            'name' => 'susan',
            'age' => 8,
        ]
    ],
];

$ages = [];
array_walk_recursive($array, function($value, $key) use(&$ages) {
    if( $key == 'age' ) {
        $ages[] = $value;
    }
});

print_r($ages); // result [10, 15, 12, 8]