How to "flatten" a multi-dimensional array to simple one in PHP?

Use array_walk_recursive

<?php

$aNonFlat = array(
    1,
    2,
    array(
        3,
        4,
        5,
        array(
            6,
            7
        ),
        8,
        9,
    ),
    10,
    11
);

$objTmp = (object) array('aFlat' => array());

array_walk_recursive($aNonFlat, create_function('&$v, $k, &$t', '$t->aFlat[] = $v;'), $objTmp);

var_dump($objTmp->aFlat);

/*
array(11) {
  [0]=>
  int(1)
  [1]=>
  int(2)
  [2]=>
  int(3)
  [3]=>
  int(4)
  [4]=>
  int(5)
  [5]=>
  int(6)
  [6]=>
  int(7)
  [7]=>
  int(8)
  [8]=>
  int(9)
  [9]=>
  int(10)
  [10]=>
  int(11)
}
*/

?>

Tested with PHP 5.5.9-1ubuntu4.24 (cli) (built: Mar 16 2018 12:32:06)

If you specifically have an array of arrays that doesn't go further than one level deep (a use case I find common) you can get away with array_merge and the splat operator.

<?php

$notFlat = [[1,2],[3,4]];
$flat = array_merge(...$notFlat);
var_dump($flat);

Output:

array(4) {
  [0]=>
  int(1)
  [1]=>
  int(2)
  [2]=>
  int(3)
  [3]=>
  int(4)
}

The splat operator effectively changes the array of arrays to a list of arrays as arguments for array_merge.

Sorry for necrobumping, but none of the provided answers did what I intuitively understood as "flattening a multidimensional array". Namely this case:

[
  'a' => [
    'b' => 'value',
  ]
]

all of the provided solutions would flatten it into just ['value'], but that loses information about the key and the depth, plus if you have another 'b' key somewhere else, it will overwrite them.

I wanted to get a result like this:

[
  'a_b' => 'value',
]

array_walk_recursive doesn't pass the information about the key it's currently recursing, so I did it with just plain recursion:

function flatten($array, $prefix = '') {
    $return = [];
    foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
        if (is_array($value)) {
            $return = array_merge($return, flatten($value, $prefix . $key . '_'));
        } else {
            $return[$prefix . $key] = $value;
        }
    }
    return $return;
}

Modify the $prefix and '_' separator to your liking.

Playground here: https://3v4l.org/0B8hf

A non-recursive solution (but order-destroying):

function flatten($ar) {
    $toflat = array($ar);
    $res = array();

    while (($r = array_shift($toflat)) !== NULL) {
        foreach ($r as $v) {
            if (is_array($v)) {
                $toflat[] = $v;
            } else {
                $res[] = $v;
            }
        }
    }

    return $res;
}

function flatten_array($array, $preserve_keys = 0, &$out = array()) {
    # Flatten a multidimensional array to one dimension, optionally preserving keys.
    #
    # $array - the array to flatten
    # $preserve_keys - 0 (default) to not preserve keys, 1 to preserve string keys only, 2 to preserve all keys
    # $out - internal use argument for recursion
    foreach($array as $key => $child)
        if(is_array($child))
            $out = flatten_array($child, $preserve_keys, $out);
        elseif($preserve_keys + is_string($key) > 1)
            $out[$key] = $child;
        else
            $out[] = $child;
    return $out;
}

I found a simple way to convert multilevel array into one. I use the function "http_build_query" which converts the array into a url string. Then, split the string with explode and decode the value.

Here is a sample.

$converted = http_build_query($data);
$rows = explode('&', $converted);
$output = array();
foreach($rows AS $k => $v){
   list($kk, $vv) = explode('=', $v);
   $output[ urldecode($kk) ] =  urldecode($vv);
}
return $output;

Someone might find this useful, I had a problem flattening array at some dimension, I would call it last dimension so for example, if I have array like:

array (
  'germany' => 
  array (
    'cars' => 
    array (
      'bmw' => 
      array (
        0 => 'm4',
        1 => 'x3',
        2 => 'x8',
      ),
    ),
  ),
  'france' => 
  array (
    'cars' => 
    array (
      'peugeot' => 
      array (
        0 => '206',
        1 => '3008',
        2 => '5008',
      ),
    ),
  ),
)

Or:

array (
  'earth' => 
  array (
    'germany' => 
    array (
      'cars' => 
      array (
        'bmw' => 
        array (
          0 => 'm4',
          1 => 'x3',
          2 => 'x8',
        ),
      ),
    ),
  ),
  'mars' => 
  array (
    'france' => 
    array (
      'cars' => 
      array (
        'peugeot' => 
        array (
          0 => '206',
          1 => '3008',
          2 => '5008',
        ),
      ),
    ),
  ),
)

For both of these arrays when I call method below I get result:

array (
  0 => 
  array (
    0 => 'm4',
    1 => 'x3',
    2 => 'x8',
  ),
  1 => 
  array (
    0 => '206',
    1 => '3008',
    2 => '5008',
  ),
)

So I am flattening to last array dimension which should stay the same, method below could be refactored to actually stop at any kind of level:

function flattenAggregatedArray($aggregatedArray) {
    $final = $lvls = [];
    $counter = 1;
    $lvls[$counter] = $aggregatedArray;


    $elem = current($aggregatedArray);

    while ($elem){
        while(is_array($elem)){
            $counter++;
            $lvls[$counter] = $elem;
            $elem =  current($elem);
        }

        $final[] = $lvls[$counter];
        $elem = next($lvls[--$counter]);
        while ( $elem  == null){
            if (isset($lvls[$counter-1])){
                $elem = next($lvls[--$counter]);
            }
            else{
                return $final;
            }
        }
    }
}