Array destructuring in PHP

# List or []

In PHP, list or [] is a so called "language construct", just like array(). This language construct is used to "pull" variables out of an array. In other words: it will "destructure" the array into separate variables.

Note that the word is "destructure", not "destruction" — that's something different 😉

Here's what that looks like:

$array = [1, 2, 3]; 

// Using the list syntax:
list($a, $b, $c) = $array;

// Or the shorthand syntax:
[$a, $b, $c] = $array;

// $a = 1
// $b = 2
// $c = 3

Whether you prefer list or its shorthand [] is up to you. People might argue that [] is ambiguous with the shorthand array syntax, and therefor prefer list. I'll be using the shorthand version in code samples though.

So what more can list do?

# Skip elements

Say you only need the third element of an array, the first two can be skipped by simply not providing a variable.

[, , $c] = $array;

// $c = 3

Also note that list will always start at index 0. Take for example the following array:

$array = [
    1 => 'a',
    2 => 'b',
    3 => 'c',
];

The first variable pulled out with list would be null, because there's no element with index 0. This might seem like a shortcoming, but luckily there are more possibilities.

# Non-numerical keys

PHP 7.1 allows list to be used with arrays that have non-numerical keys. This opens a world of possibilities.

$array = [
    'a' => 1,
    'b' => 2,
    'c' => 3,
];

['c' => $c, 'a' => $a] = $array;

As you can see, you can change the order however you want, and also skip elements entirely.

# In practice

One of the uses of list are functions like parse_url and pathinfo. Because these functions return an array with named parameters, we can use list to pull out the information we'd like:

[
    'basename' => $file,
    'dirname' => $directory,
] = pathinfo('/users/test/file.png');

As you can see, the variables don't need the same name as the key. Also note that destructuring an array with an unknown key will trigger a notice:

[
    'path' => $path, 
    'query' => $query,
] = parse_url('https://stitcher.io/blog');

// PHP Notice:  Undefined index: query

In this case, $query would be null.

One last detail: trailing commas are allowed with named destructs, just like you're used to with arrays.

# In loops

You can also use the list construct in loops:

$array = [
    [
        'name' => 'a',
        'id' => 1
    ],
    [
        'name' => 'b',
        'id' => 2
    ],
];

foreach ($array as ['id' => $id, 'name' => $name]) {
    // …
}

This could be useful when parsing for example a JSON or CSV file. Be careful though that undefined keys will still trigger a notice.

In summary, there are some pretty good cases in which list can be of help!