Search a Multidimensional Array

Searching a PHP array was not as simple as I had thought. Sure, you can use array_search() but that only finds one value off an array the last time I tried it out. I needed something to search a multidimensional array, for example… I tried many things before I finally figured it out!

Searching a PHP array with array_filter()

I was fooling around with an Online Users script in PHP recently. Since I was determined to get it all done using just a text file, I needed to get my arrays, well, all in an array! 😛

Sample array data from the Online Users script

Here is a sample of the data my Online Users PHP script collected in an array:

<?php

// Filename: online.php

// Some dummy data in the main multidimensional array

   // $users['ip']=array(
   //                'ts'=>[int timestamp],
   //                'ctr'=>[int counter],
   //                'pg'=>[str viewing page] );

$users['161.142.1.10'] = array(
                           'ts'=>1052649255,
                           'ctr'=>1,
                           'pg'=>'/forum/' );
$users['202.188.1.5'] = array(
                           'ts'=>1052649289,
                           'ctr'=>2,
                           'pg'=>'/webdsn/' );
$users['192.101.10.55'] = array(
                           'ts'=>1052649300,
                           'ctr'=>1,
                           'pg'=>'/arrays/filter.html' );
$users['65.101.111.58'] = array(
                           'ts'=>1052649899,
                           'ctr'=>2,
                           'pg'=>'/' );

So, according to this data, there are 4 users online; each user being tracked by their IP address, of course. Now every time somebody views a page, this data/array is updated. As well as adding a new IP address to the array, I need to compare the Unix timestamp now with the values already in the array, and remove any user that has ‘timed out’! This is where I needed to use array_filter().

Let’s say the Unix time now is 1052649900; so our constant below, TIMED_OUT, would hold the value 1052649300, which means 10 minutes ago i.e. 1052649900-600.

// TIMED_OUT constant set to Unix time 10 minutes ago
define( 'TIMED_OUT', time() - 10*60 );

Sample callback function for array_filter()

The PHP array_filter() function requires two parameters, the array to search i.e. $users (array from example above) and a callback function that we shall now create. We’ll name this callback function update_users():

function update_users( $users )
{
  // compare each $users['ts'] value with the constant
  // TIMED_OUT and return only those that have
  // an equal or higher value.
  return ( $users['ts'] >= TIMED_OUT );
}

Getting the results from a search with array_filter()

Next we create a ‘new’ array, $users_still_online, by using the callback function we created above, like this:

$users_still_online = array_filter( $users, 'update_users' );

// Print the results...
print_r( $users_still_online );

Ouput:

Array
(
    [192.101.10.55] => Array
        (
            [ts] => 1052649300
            [ctr] => 1
            [pg] => /arrays/filter.html
        )

    [65.101.111.58] => Array
        (
            [ts] => 1052649899
            [ctr] => 2
            [pg] => /
        )

)

Meaning that only 2 users were online in the last 10 minutes!