I find this function vey useful when you have a big array and you want to know if a given value is in the array. in_array in fact becomes quite slow in such a case, but you can flip the big array and then use isset to obtain the same result in a much faster way.
array_flip
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
array_flip — Exchanges all keys with their associated values in an array
Description
array_flip() returns an array in flip
order, i.e. keys from array become values and values
from array become keys.
Note that the values of array need to be valid
keys, i.e. they need to be either int or
string. A warning will be emitted if a value has the wrong
type, and the key/value pair in question will not be included
in the result.
If a value has several occurrences, the latest key will be used as its value, and all others will be lost.
Parameters
-
array -
An array of key/value pairs to be flipped.
Return Values
Returns the flipped array.
Examples
Example #1 array_flip() example
<?php
$input = array("oranges", "apples", "pears");
$flipped = array_flip($input);
print_r($flipped);
?>The above example will output:
Array
(
[oranges] => 0
[apples] => 1
[pears] => 2
)
Example #2 array_flip() example : collision
<?php
$input = array("a" => 1, "b" => 1, "c" => 2);
$flipped = array_flip($input);
print_r($flipped);
?>The above example will output:
Array
(
[1] => b
[2] => c
)
See Also
- array_values() - Return all the values of an array
- array_keys() - Return all the keys or a subset of the keys of an array
- array_reverse() - Return an array with elements in reverse order
add a note
User Contributed Notes 19 notes
Final ¶
13 years ago
Tony H ¶
11 years ago
This function is useful when parsing a CSV file with a heading column, but the columns might vary in order or presence:
<?php
$f = fopen("file.csv", "r");
/* Take the first line (the header) into an array, then flip it
so that the keys are the column name, and values are the
column index. */
$cols = array_flip(fgetcsv($f));
while ($line = fgetcsv($f))
{
// Now we can reference CSV columns like so:
$status = $line[$cols['OrderStatus']];
}
?>
I find this better than referencing the numerical array index.
Bob Ray ¶
7 years ago
array_flip will remove duplicate values in the original array when you flip either an associative or numeric array. As you might expect it's the earlier of two duplicates that is lost:
<?php
$a = array('one', 'two', 'one');
print_r($a);
$b = array_flip($a);
print_r($b);
?>
Result:
array(3) {
[0] => string(3) "one"
[1] => string(3) "two"
[2] => string(3) "one"
}
array(2) {
'one' => int(2)
'two' => int(1)
}
This may be good or bad, depending on what you want, but no error is thrown.
Prabhas Gupte ¶
9 years ago
array_flip() does not retain the data type of values, when converting them into keys. :(
<?php
$arr = array('one' => '1', 'two' => '2', 'three' => '3');
var_dump($arr);
$arr2 = array_flip($arr);
var_dump($arr2);
?>
This code outputs this:
array(3) {
["one"]=>
string(1) "1"
["two"]=>
string(1) "2"
["three"]=>
string(1) "3"
}
array(3) {
[1]=>
string(3) "one"
[2]=>
string(3) "two"
[3]=>
string(5) "three"
}
It is valid expectation that string values "1", "2" and "3" would become string keys "1", "2" and "3".
pinkgothic at gmail dot com ¶
17 years ago
In case anyone is wondering how array_flip() treats empty arrays:
<?php
print_r(array_flip(array()));
?>
results in:
Array
(
)
I wanted to know if it would return false and/or even chuck out an error if there were no key-value pairs to flip, despite being non-intuitive if that were the case. But (of course) everything works as expected. Just a head's up for the paranoid.
snaury at narod dot ru ¶
20 years ago
When you do array_flip, it takes the last key accurence for each value, but be aware that keys order in flipped array will be in the order, values were first seen in original array. For example, array:
[1] => 1
[2] => 2
[3] => 3
[4] => 3
[5] => 2
[6] => 1
[7] => 1
[8] => 3
[9] => 3
After flipping will become:
(first seen value -> first key)
[1] => 7
[2] => 5
[3] => 9
And not anything like this:
(last seen value -> last key)
[2] => 5
[1] => 7
[3] => 9
In my application I needed to find five most recently commented entries. I had a sorted comment-id => entry-id array, and what popped in my mind is just do array_flip($array), and I thought I now would have last five entries in the array as most recently commented entry => comment pairs. In fact it wasn't (see above, as it is the order of values used). To achieve what I need I came up with the following (in case someone will need to do something like that):
First, we need a way to flip an array, taking the first encountered key for each of values in array. You can do it with:
$array = array_flip(array_unique($array));
Well, and to achieve that "last comments" effect, just do:
$array = array_reverse($array, true);
$array = array_flip(array_unique($array));
$array = array_reverse($array, true);
In the example from the very beginning array will become:
[2] => 5
[1] => 7
[3] => 9
Just what I (and maybe you?) need. =^_^=
kjensen at iaff106 dot com ¶
12 years ago
I needed a way to flip a multidimensional array and came up with this function to accomplish the task. I hope it helps someone else.
<?php
function multi_array_flip($arrayIn, $DesiredKey, $DesiredKey2=false, $OrigKeyName=false) {
$ArrayOut=array();
foreach ($arrayIn as $Key=>$Value)
{
// If there is an original key that need to be preserved as data in the new array then do that if requested ($OrigKeyName=true)
if ($OrigKeyName) $Value[$OrigKeyName]=$Key;
// Require a string value in the data part of the array that is keyed to $DesiredKey
if (!is_string($Value[$DesiredKey])) return false;
// If $DesiredKey2 was specified then assume a multidimensional array is desired and build it
if (is_string($DesiredKey2))
{
// Require a string value in the data part of the array that is keyed to $DesiredKey2
if (!is_string($Value[$DesiredKey2])) return false;
// Build NEW multidimensional array
$ArrayOut[$Value[$DesiredKey]][$Value[$DesiredKey2]]=$Value;
}
// Build NEW single dimention array
else $ArrayOut[$Value[$DesiredKey]][]=$Value;
}
return $ArrayOut;
}//end multi_array_flip
?>
mmulej at gmail dot com ¶
3 years ago
If you don't want to lose duplicates, and you're ok, with having the values in the flipped array in an array as well, you may use this:
PHP 7.4 - ^8
<?php
function array_flip_safe(array $array) : array
{
return array_reduce(array_keys($array), function ($carry, $key) use (&$array) {
$carry[$array[$key]] ??= [];
$carry[$array[$key]][] = $key;
return $carry;
}, []);
}
?>
PHP 7.0 - ^7.3 (Time to upgrade to PHP 8 ^^)
<?php
function array_flip_safe(array $array) : array
{
return array_reduce(array_keys($array), function ($carry, $key) use (&$array) {
$carry[$array[$key]] = $carry[$array[$key]] ?? [];
$carry[$array[$key]][] = $key;
return $carry;
}, []);
}
?>
PHP 5.4 - ^5.6 (Just don't)
<?php
function array_flip_safe(array $array)
{
return array_reduce(array_keys($array), function ($carry, $key) use (&$array) {
if (!isset($carry[$array[$key]])
$carry[$array[$key]] = [];
$carry[$array[$key]][] = $key;
return $carry;
}, []);
}
?>
Hayley Watson ¶
7 years ago
Don't use this function for filtering or searching an array - PHP already has functions for exactly those purposes. If nothing else, array_flip will trash the array's elements if they're anything other than integers or non-decimal-integer strings.
Anonymous ¶
12 years ago
Similarly, if you want the last value without affecting the pointer, you can do:
<?php
$array = array("one","two","three");
echo next($array); // "two"
$last = array_pop(array_keys(array_flip($array)));
echo $last; // "three"
echo current($array); // "two"
?>
Ahammar Yassine ¶
6 years ago
<?php
$arr = array('one' => ['four' => 4], 'two' => '2', 'three' => '3');
var_dump($arr);
$arr2 = array_flip($arr);
var_dump($arr2);
?>
The above example will output:
array(3) {
["one"]=>
array(1) {
["four"]=>
int(4)
}
["two"]=>
string(1) "2"
["three"]=>
string(1) "3"
}
Warning: array_flip(): Can only flip STRING and INTEGER values! in /root/test.php on line 4
array(2) {
[2]=>
string(3) "two"
[3]=>
string(5) "three"
}
Hayley Watson ¶
15 years ago
Finding the longest string in an array?
<?php
function longest_string_in_array($array)
{
$mapping = array_combine($array, array_map('strlen', $array));
return array_keys($mapping, max($mapping));
}
?>
Differences are obvious: returns an array of [i]all[/i] of the longest strings, instead of just picking one arbitrarily. Doesn't do the stripslashing or magic stuff because that's another job for for another function.
dan at aoindustries dot com ¶
15 years ago
From an algorithmic efficiency standpoint, building an entire array of lengths to then sort to only retrieve the longest value is unnecessary work. The following should be O(n) instead of O(n log n). It could also be:
<?php
function get_longest_value($array) {
// Some don't like to initialize, I do
$longest = NULL;
$longestLen = -1;
foreach ($array $value) {
$len = strlen($value);
if($len>$longestLen) {
$longest = $value;
$longestLen = $len;
}
}
$longest = str_replace("\r\n", "\n", $longest);
if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) { return stripslashes($longest); }
return $longest;
}
?>
grimdestripador at hotmail dot com ¶
10 years ago
<?php
function array_flip_into_subarray($input){
$output = array();
foreach ($input as $key=>$values){
foreach ($values as $value){
$output[$value][] = $key;
}
}
return $output;
}
znailz at yahoo dot com ¶
21 years ago
I know a lot of people want a function to remove a key by value from an array. I saw solutions that iterate(!) though the whole array comparing value by value and then unsetting that value's key. PHP has a built-in function for pretty much everything (heard it will even cook you breakfast), so if you think "wouldn't it be cool if PHP had a function to do that...", odds are it already has. Check out this example. It takes a value, gets all keys for that value if it has duplicates, unsets them all, and returns a reindexed array.
<?php
$arr = array(11,12,13,12); // sample array
$arr = array_flip($arr);
unset($arr[12]);
$arr = array(array_keys($arr));
?>
$arr contains:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => 11
[1] => 13
)
?>
)
h3x ¶
14 years ago
this function can be used to remove null elements form an array:
<?php
$ar = array(null,'1','2',null,'3',null);
print_r($ar);
/*
result:
Array
(
[0] =>
[1] => 1
[2] => 2
[3] =>
[4] => 3
[5] =>
)
*/
print_r(array_flip(array_flip($ar)));
/*
result:
Array
(
[1] => 1
[2] => 2
[4] => 3
)
*/
?>
info at sabastore dot net ¶
8 years ago
note :: array_flip is a changer for key and value and a auto unique like array_unique :
<?php
/*
sabastore
*/
$intArray1 = array(-4,1,1,3);
print_r($intArray1);
$intArray1 = array_flip($intArray1);
print_r($intArray1);
?>
corz at corz dot org ¶
16 years ago
<?php
/*
Fun function to return the longest physical *value* from an array.
Culled from a small script designed to capture the longest $_POST variable,
usually the textarea, which would then be dumped to a "emergency post dump file".
corz at corz dot org
*/
$array = array("input" => "submit", "textarea" => "Some long spiel of text\r\na textarea, probably",
"another-input" => "make me longer", "and" => "another", "etc" => "etc.");
echo '<!DOCTYPE HTML SYSTEM><html><head><title>long</title></head><body><pre>Longest value: ',
get_longest_value($array),'</pre></body></html>';
function get_longest_value($array) {
foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
$lengths[$key] = strlen($value);
}
asort($lengths);
$lengths = array_flip($lengths);
$longest = str_replace("\r\n", "\n", $array[array_pop($lengths)]);
if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) { return stripslashes($longest); }
return $longest;
}
?>
