Accessing elements from a PHP array

Question

I am trying to access a property called 'ChatId' that is returned in the curl_exec command to the variable server_output.

$server_output = curl_exec($ch);
$output = json_decode($server_output, true);

After this I tried running:

var_dump(get_object_vars($output));

But $output is actually an array and not an object. So when I run var_dump($output) I get the output:

array(1) {
  ["Chats"]=>
  array(1) {
    [0]=>
    array(1) {
      ["Chat"]=>
      array(3) {
        ["ChatId"]=>
        int(11845)
        ["UserId"]=>
        string(16) "d9729feb63a1a015"
        ["SystemId"]=>
        string(33) "d9729feb63a1a015~434534343"
      }
    }
  }
}

The only property I want to access is the ChatId property but I am having difficulty doing so.

Thanks for this it worked fine! I was having trouble with that — MC14
– MC14, Commented Apr 24, 2020 at 10:15

Robert Vlasiu · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-24 10:51:51Z

2

For future reference, each array(x) is opening up a new level of elements, where x is how many elements this level has. So if we are to remove these and think of a structure similar to the directory structure we get this:

$output
--->["Chats"]
    ---> [0]
         ---> ["Chat"]
             ---> ["ChatId"]
             ---> ["UserId"]
             ---> ["SystemId"]

So if ChatId was the file you would want to get to you would first have to go to the "Chats" directory, then the [0] one, then the ["Chat"] one and then you can select the file you want.

So

 $output["Chats"][0]["Chat"]["UserId"]

Hope this will help you in the future while working with arrays.

answered Apr 24, 2020 at 10:51

Robert Vlasiu

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1 Comment

MC14 Over a year ago

Thank you very much for your explanation, this will help me in future and I will use this approach when dealing with similar arrays in the future!

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