PHP - sorting arrays in group

Question

I have trouble sorting my array result in a different way. I have written an API call that returns specified results but not in the right way.

So it gives me:

{
"success": true,
"data": [
    [
        "Question",
        [
            "Answer"
        ]
    ],
    [
        "Question",
        [
            "Answer 2"
        ]
    ],
    [
        "Question 2",
        [
            "Answer 3"
        ]
    ]
],
"message": null

}

And I want to return a group of answers for that question like:

{
"success": true,
"data": [
    [
        "Question",
        [
            "Answer"
        ],
        [
            "Answer 2"
        ]
    ],
    [
        "Question 2",
        [
            "Answer 3"
        ]
    ]
],
"message": null
}

And my code looks like:

$questions = $this->getQRepository()->findAll();

$mappedQuestions = [];

foreach ($questions as $question){

    $title = $question->getTitle();

    $mappedQuestions[] = [
        $title,
        [
            $question->getAnswer()
        ]
    ];
}

return $mappedQuestions;

It gives me the result where it groups every question with answer by id but I need to group all answers by question. The result returns correctly but sorting is wrong.

in your first array, there is 2 index with name question... and your sorting end like question, question, question 2... — Sayed Mohd Ali, Mar 05 '19 at 08:48
and the solution you asked for is sorting like question, question2 where is another key with name question is gone? what you want to do with it? — Sayed Mohd Ali, Mar 05 '19 at 08:48
Can you please provide sample response for `$questions = $this->getQRepository()->findAll();`? — Olawale, Mar 05 '19 at 08:51
It returns all data from questions table and that is a data that I am trying to sort. @Olawale — develops, Mar 05 '19 at 09:04
I did it by groupBy but it returns just one answer per question not all of them. @AfifZafri — develops, Mar 05 '19 at 09:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 05 '19 at 09:36

This might work, but I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for. So first, modified your current looping and $mappedQuestions array structure like this:

$mappedQuestions = [];

foreach ($questions as $question){

    $mappedQuestions[] = array(
                               'title' => $question->getTitle(), 
                               'answer' => $question->getAnswer()
                          );
}

After that, iterate the array one more time to create a new array that will group together the elements based on the array key, which in this case is "title".

$sorted = array();
foreach ($mappedQuestions as $element) {
    $sorted[$element['title']][] = $element['answer'];
}

return $sorted;

The final output of $sorted is:

{
   "Question":[
      "Answer",
      "Answer 2"
   ],
   "Question 2":[
      "Answer 3"
   ]

The sort looping code is actually from this question.

I hope this help.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '19 at 09:31

you need to iterate 2 loops to achieve it, I took your JSON in $json variable and then proceed as,

$json = '{
    "success": true,
    "data": [
        [
            "Question",
            [
                "Answer"
            ]
        ],
        [
            "Question",
            [
                "Answer 2"
            ]
        ],
        [
            "Question 2",
            [
                "Answer 3"
            ]
        ]
    ],
    "message": null
    }';

$arr = (array) json_decode($json, true);

foreach($arr['data'] AS $a){
    $newArr[ $a[ 0 ] ][] = array( $a[ 1 ][ 0 ] );
}

foreach($newArr AS $key => $a){
    $newArr2[] = array_merge(array($key), array_values($a));
}

$finalArr = array('success' => $arr['success'], 'data' => $newArr2, 'message' => $arr['message']);

print_r($finalArr); // this is final o/p which you want,

Note: this is may be not correct answer, but by this now you have an idea how to do,

This is one possible solution. Thanks a lot for feedback. @harishsharma — develops, Mar 05 '19 at 09:48

PHP - sorting arrays in group

2 Answers2