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Flatten a Multi-dimensional PHP Array

Learn how to convert a nested PHP array into a single-level array, useful for processing data structures and simplifying iterations over all elements.

function flattenArray(array $array): array {
    $result = [];
    foreach ($array as $element) {
        if (is_array($element)) {
            $result = array_merge($result, flattenArray($element));
        } else {
            $result[] = $element;
        }
    }
    return $result;
}

$nestedArray = [
    1,
    [2, 3],
    [4, [5, 6]],
    7
];

$flatArray = flattenArray($nestedArray);
// $flatArray will be [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
How it works: This function recursively flattens a multi-dimensional array into a single-dimensional one. It iterates through each element; if an element is an array, it recursively calls itself and merges the result. Otherwise, it adds the element directly to the result array.

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