Delete PHP array by value (not key)

If you know for definite that your array will contain only one element with that value, you can do

$key = array_search($del_val, $array);

if (false !== $key) {

    unset($array[$key]);

}

3 years ago

One interesting way is by using array_keys():

foreach (array_keys($messages, 401, true) as $key) {

    unset($messages[$key]);

}

The (array_keys() function takes two additional parameters to return only keys for a particular value and whether strict checking is required (i.e. using === for comparison).

This can also remove multiple array items with the same value (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 3, 4]).

3 years ago

Using array_search() and unset, try the following:

if (($key = array_search($del_val, $messages)) !== false) {

    unset($messages[$key]);

}

array_search() returns the key of the element it finds, which can be used to remove that element from the original array using unset(). It will return FALSE on failure, however it can return a false-y value on success (your key may be 0 for example), which is why the strict comparison !== operator is used.
The if() statement will check whether array_search() returned a value, and will only perform an action if it did.

3 years ago