How to delete object from array inside foreach loop?

Question

Hi, I iterate through an array of objects and want to delete one of the objects based on it's 'id' property, but my code doesn't work.

foreach($array as $element) {
    foreach($element as $key => $value) {
        if($key == 'id' && $value == 'searched_value'){
            //delete this particular object from the $array
            unset($element);//this doesn't work
            unset($array,$element);//neither does this
        } 
    }
}

Any suggestions. Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm not much of a php programmer, but I can say that in C# you cannot modify an array while iterating through it. You may want to try using your foreach loop to identify the index of the element, or elements to remove, then delete the elements after the loop.

Answer 2

foreach($array as $elementKey => $element) {
    foreach($element as $valueKey => $value) {
        if($valueKey == 'id' && $value == 'searched_value'){
            //delete this particular object from the $array
            unset($array[$elementKey]);
        } 
    }
}

Answer 3

It looks like your syntax for unset is invalid, and the lack of reindexing might cause trouble in the future. See: the section on PHP arrays.

The correct syntax is shown above. Also keep in mind array-values for reindexing, so you don't ever index something you previously deleted.

Answer 4

Try this:

foreach($array AS &$element) {
    foreach($element AS $key => $value) {
        if ($key == 'id' && $value == 'searched_value') {
            unset($element); // Now it works! :)
        } 
    }
}

Actually you can do this instead:

foreach($array AS $key => $element) {
    if (isset($element['id']) AND ($element['id'] == 'searched_value')) {
        unset($array[$key]);
    }
}