awkward duplication in 2d array php
Question by shanahobo86
I merged two arrays together that both contained a string(url) and int(score). the following is a sample of the outome. Whenever a string is duplicated, i need to remove that string and its corresponding int. For example, on the 4th line (www.thebeatles.com/ – 30) should be removed. The 5th and 6th lines should also be removed as they appear already with a different score.
http://www.thebeatles.com/ - 55
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles - 49
http://www.beatlesstory.com/ - 45
http://www.thebeatles.com/ - 30
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles - 28
http://www.beatlesstory.com/ - 26
http://www.beatlesagain.com/ - 24
http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/ - 23
http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles - 22
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/the-beatles/id136975 - 20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6tV11acSRk - 18
http://blekko.com/ws/http://www.thebeatles.com/+/seo - 17
http://www.adriandenning.co.uk/beatles.html - 16
http://www.npr.org/artists/15229570/the-beatles - 15
http://mp3.com/artist/The%2BBeatles - 14
http://www.beatles.com/ - 13
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU7JjJJZi1Q - 12
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/thebeatles - 11
http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/love/default.aspx - 9
http://www.recordingthebeatles.com/ - 7
http://www.beatlesbible.com/ - 5
I’m new to PHP and my best efforts to get array_unique() to work have failed. Really appreciate some help guys!
Answer by Sven
Here is a function that merges two arrays and discards any duplications, hopes it helps:
function merge_links($arr_l, $arr_r) {
$new_links = array();
$links = array_merge($arr_l, $arr_r); //the big list with every links
foreach($links as $link) {
$found = false; //did we found a duplicate?
//check if we already have it
foreach($new_links as $new_link) {
if($new_link['url'] == $link['url']) {
//duplicate
$found = true;
break;
}
}
//not found, so insert it
if(!$found) {
$new_links[] = $link;
}
}
return $new_links;
}
$arr1[0]['url'] = 'http://test.nl';
$arr1[0]['score'] = 30;
$arr1[1]['url'] = 'http://www.google.nl';
$arr1[1]['score'] = 30;
$arr2[0]['url'] = 'http://www.tres.nl';
$arr2[0]['score'] = 30;
$arr2[1]['url'] = 'http://test.nl';
$arr2[1]['score'] = 30;
print_r(merge_links($arr1, $arr2));
Answer by Starx
Well, even technically, those strings are not unique. i.e. They are completely different.
So, array_unique() will not give you the required output. One way of solving this issue is by defining a separate array and storing the URI and the number separately. A manageable form would be this.
array(
array("http://www.thebeatles.com", 55),
array("http://www.thebeatles.com", 30)
);
