Quick snip: Recursive find and replace

The problem:
We have a multidimensional array and have to find and replace some values. It would be the best if the result is the same array with values changed.

The solution:
We need to write a simple function which will be called recursively to generate a resulting array.

Here it is:

[code lang=”php”]
function rec_array_replace($find, $replace, $array){

if (!is_array($array)) {
return str_replace($find, $replace, $array);
}

$newArray = array();

foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
$newArray[$key] = rec_array_replace($value);
}

return $newArray;
}

[/code]

It is quite straightforward but I will explain anyway. Function first checks if $array is actually an array and if it isn’t, it returns regular str_replace. If it is an array, we are creating empty array $newArray.

We advance through the given array by key and value and call recursively the same function. This time $array is not an array and the function returns regular str_replace, which is our value.

That’s it.