Traversing Arrays Using Dot Notation

Dot notation allows us to traverse an array in a very elegant way, it is specially useful when working with deeply nested sets.

Let me show you what I mean by ​“dot notation”.

The array to traverse #

Here is a somewhat deeply nested array to work with…

$developer = array(
    'name'   => 'Brad Bell',
    'mood'   => 'Angry',
    'family' => array(
        'spouse'  => array(
            'name' => 'Brandon Kelly'
        ),
        'brother' => array(
            'name' => 'That European Guy'
        )
    )
);

Pretty contrived example but it will do: )

Dot notated value getter function #

This simple getValueByKey() function is one way to implement dot notation support and I opted to keep it simple for the purpose of this example.

By simple I mean, I’m not using multibyte string functions or using recursion to optimize execution or anything else.

function getValueByKey($key, array $data, $default = null)
{
    // @assert $key is a non-empty string
    // @assert $data is a loopable array
    // @otherwise return $default value
    if (!is_string($key) || empty($key) || !count($data))
    {
        return $default;
    }

    // @assert $key contains a dot notated string
    if (strpos($key, '.') !== false)
    {
        $keys = explode('.', $key);

        foreach ($keys as $innerKey)
        {
            // @assert $data[$innerKey] is available to continue
            // @otherwise return $default value
            if (!array_key_exists($innerKey, $data))
            {
                return $default;
            }

            $data = $data[$innerKey];
        }

        return $data;
    }

    // @fallback returning value of $key in $data or $default value
    return array_key_exists($key, $data) ? $data[$key] : $default;
}

If you like optimizing this kind of stuff like I do, feel free to check out the gist and go to town:)

Using dot notation #

We can now access deeply nested keys with the ability to provide a sensible default value if the provided key is not found.

getValueByKey('family.spouse.name', $developer, 'Matt Stauffer');
// Brandon Kelly

getValueByKey('family.spouse.nonExistent', $developer, 'Matt Stauffer');
// Matt Stauffer

getValueByKey('family.brother', $developer);
// Array
// (
//    [name] => That European Guy
// )

The equivalent (or at least one way of doing it) in vanilla PHP would be something like this…

echo    isset($developer['family']['spouse']['name'])
        ?
        $developer['family']['spouse']['name']
        :
        'Matt Stauffer'
        ;
// Brandon Kelly

Now you know dot notation #

The next time you’re working on a Craft CMS plugin and need to access deeply nested variables inside $_POST or $_GET, you can use something like the getValueByKey() function.

Better yet, you can use the implementation Craft itself provides which deals with UTF8 and multibyte string issues.

craft()->request->getPost('root.levelOne.levelTwo.property');
craft()->request->getQuery('root.levelOne.levelTwo.property');

The Craft guys are good at giving us the tools we need that way, one reason I love their product for sure.

That’s about it, go traverse some deeply nested arrays while you sip on hot cocoa: )