how to count the number of items in a php associative array

Question

I have an array as below.

Array
(
[0] => Array
    (
        [item] => Banana Cream Cheesecake
        [item_id] => 3
        [product] => Desserts
    )

[1] => Array
    (
        [item] => Banana Cream Cheesecake
        [item_id] => 3
        [product] => Desserts
    )

[2] => Array
    (
        [item] => Banana Cream Cheesecake
        [item_id] => 3
        [product] => Desserts
    )

[3] => Array
    (
        [item] => Banana Cream Cheesecake
        [item_id] => 3
        [product] => Desserts
    )

[4] => Array
    (
        [item] => Milk
        [item_id] => 2
        [product] => Soda
    )

[5] => Array
    (
        [item] => Banana Cream Cheesecake
        [item_id] => 3
        [product] => Desserts
    )
)

I want to print :-

Banana Cream Cheesecake = 5

how to do it?

Solution 1

$count = 0;
foreach ($array as $key=>$value) {
    if ($value ['item'] == 'Banana Cream Cheesecake') {
        $count++;
    }
}
echo $count;

Solution 2

array_count_values(array_map(function($foo){return $foo['item'];}, $arr));

Solution 3

Given an array like this:

$arr = array(array('item' => 'Banana Cream Cheesecake',
                   'item_id' => 3,
                   'product' => 'Desserts'),
             array('item' => 'Banana Cream Cheesecake',
                   'item_id' => 3,
                   'product' => 'Desserts'),
             array('item' => 'Banana Cream Cheesecake',
                   'item_id' => 3,
                   'product' => 'Desserts'),
             array('item' => 'Banana Cream Cheesecake',
                   'item_id' => 3,
                   'product' => 'Desserts'),
             array('item' => 'Milk',
                   'item_id' => 2,
                   'product' => 'Soda'),
             array('item' => 'Banana Cream Cheesecake',
                   'item_id' => 3,
                   'product' => 'Desserts'));

You could use array_count_values and get the count by its name

$counted = array_count_values(array_map(function($value){return $value['item'];}, $arr));
echo $counted['Banana Cream Cheesecake'];

Or modify the function to work with the item's id:

$counted = array_count_values(array_map(function($value){return $value['item_id'];}, $arr));
// The item_id
echo $counted['3'];

Solution 4

Expanding on @steve's answer

$counted = array_count_values(array_map(function($foo){return $foo['item'];}, $arr));

This gives you an array with totals of each value for the ['item'] key.

For example, this is the array your example would return:

$counted = Array
(
    ['Banana Cream Cheesecake'] => 5
    ['Milk'] => 1
)

Then, to print it's just a matter of echoing that variable:

echo 'Banana Cream Cheesecake = ' . $counted['Banana Cream Cheesecake'];
//prints "Banana Cream Cheesecake = 5"

The advantage here is that you don't need to run through a for loop for each value you need to count - instead you have an array with totals for all values for that specific key.

Solution 5

print_r the array and count the number of occurrences of your cheese cake.

No, seriously, without more infos this is a solution ;)

$iCount = substr_count(print_r($array, true), "cheese cake");

View more solutions

Comments

[Adam Thornton]

I would hope for more re usability he would actually want an array of totals rather than just knowing how many of that specific dessert there are?

[Sebas]

thanks! Answers and conditionned by questions, I guess i might do myself differently in other contexts...

[Sebas]

Did you change the string/array inside by what you need?

[Michael Laffargue]

@Navdeep You should do print_r($array, true) so it returns the string and doesn't write in standard output

[Arsha]

This answer is work faster than array_count_values() My code use something like this for 8 times. Spend total 0.22 milliseconds. Then I change to use array_count_values() for once only this function spend 0.39 milliseconds.