Create an associative array with values as an array from an another associative array

Question

I have a query that returns an array or associative arrays of ids and years. It looks like this:

[{"id":8,"year":1950},{"id":9,"year":1950},{"id":8,"year":1951},{"id":9,"year":1951},{"id":8,"year":1952}]

There is a fixed number of ids, but they each have many years associated. I wrote the following script to turn the results of the query into a more simple associative array with the ids as keys and an array of years as the value.

$rows = array("8" => array(),"9" => array());

foreach(array_keys($rows) as $key){
    foreach($results as $result){
        if ($key == $result['id']){
            array_push($rows[$key], $result['year']);
        }
    }
}

returns:

{"8":[1950,1951,1952],"9":[1950,1951]}

I would like to change this so that the initial $rows array is not hard-coded (ie get the keys from the initial query). I would also like to avoid the nested foreach/foreach/if nastiness as well if possible.

Answer 1

By iterating through array_keys($rows), you are not using the $results associative array effectively. You should be able to just write this:

foreach ($results as $result) {
    $rows[$result['id']][] = $result['year'];
}

Also, there is no need to call array_push() if you are appending just one item. You can just assign $rows[] = with no index to indicate that you want to append one element.