What is the best method of getting the key of the last added array item in PHP?

Question

Is there a better way to do the following:

$array = array('test1', 'test2', 'test3', 'test4', 'test5');
// do a bunch of other stuff, probably a loop
$array[] = 'test6';
end($array);
echo key($array); // gives me 6

This will give the key of the most recently add array element.

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

You could also do:

$end = end(array_keys($array));

But I think your way makes it clear what you want to do, so you could whip something up like:

function array_last_key($array) {
    end($array);
    return key($array);
}

That's about it.

Answer 2

There is no special function for this in PHP, so I think your way is the most efficent way of doing this. For readability you might want to put it in a function called something like array_last_key().

Answer 3

If you can guarantee that your array won't have any non-numerical keys and that you aren't going to be deleting any keys, then the last element added to your array's key will be

$last_added = count($array)-1;

If you really need to keep track of the latest added key, you may want to come up with a scheme to come up with your own keys that are guaranteed to be unique. this way you'll always have the latest added key since you generated it.

$array = array('test1', 'test2', 'test3', 'test4', 'test5');
// do a bunch of other stuff, probably a loop
$new_key = generate_key();
$array[$new_key] = 'test6';
echo $new_key; // gives me blahblahfoobar123

Answer 4

Simply put no. Both end and key are Big O(1) time. Any other way slows your code down and adds complexity.