Create a product array with all possible variations

Question

I'm trying to produce an array with all variations of a product. There can be an unlimited amount of attributes and variations.

Provided array:

["Shirt"]           # Product
    ["Color"]       # Attribute
        ["Green"]   # Variation
        ["Red"]
        ["Blue"]
    ["Size"]
        ["Small"]
        ["Medium"]
        ["Large"]

Expected result:

[0]
    ["type" => "Shirt"]
    ["color" => "Green"]
    ["Size" => "Small"]
[1]
    ["type" => "Shirt"]
    ["color" => "Green"]
    ["Size" => "Medium"]
...
[4]
    ["type" => "Shirt"]
    ["color" => "Red"]
    ["Size" => "Medium"]
[4]
    ["type" => "Shirt"]
    ["color" => "Red"]
    ["Size" => "Large"]

I've tried Laravel's and PHP's built-in functions, but haven't found success. I would really appreciate any insight.

"*I've tried Laravel's and PHP's built-in functions*" can you include what you've tried? Should be a simple set of nested loops that, when in the `size` loop, creates and pushes an array containing the properties from it and the pervious two loops (color and type). — Tim Lewis, Sep 25 '18 at 15:10
Possible duplicate of [Finding cartesian product with PHP associative arrays](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6311779/finding-cartesian-product-with-php-associative-arrays) — R. Chappell, Sep 25 '18 at 15:12

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 30 '21 at 05:28

Your question seems to be close to this universal approach I have:

$arr = [
    'size'  => ['XS', 'S', 'M'],
    'color' => ['yellow', 'brown', 'white'],
    'weight'=> [
        'light' => [
            'super',
            'medium'
        ],
        'normal',
        'heavy' => [
            'regular',
            'most', 
            'overload'
        ]
    ]
];

function variations($array) {
    if (empty($array)) {
        return [];
    }

    function traverse($array, $parent_ind) {
        $r = [];
        $pr = '';

        if(!is_numeric($parent_ind)) {
            $pr = $parent_ind.'-';
        }

        foreach ($array as $ind => $el) {
            if (is_array($el)) {
                $r = array_merge($r, traverse($el, $pr.(is_numeric($ind) ? '' : $ind)));
            } elseif (is_numeric($ind)) {
                $r[] = $pr.$el;
            } else {
                $r[] = $pr.$ind.'-'.$el;
            }
        }

        return $r;
    }

    //1. Go through entire array and transform elements that are arrays into elements, collect keys
    $keys = [];
    $size = 1;

    foreach ($array as $key => $elems) {
        if (is_array($elems)) {
            $rr = [];

            foreach ($elems as $ind => $elem) {
                if (is_array($elem)) {
                    $rr = array_merge($rr, traverse($elem, $ind));
                } else {
                    $rr[] = $elem;
                }
            }

            $array[$key] = $rr;
            $size *= count($rr);
        }

        $keys[] = $key;
    }

    //2. Go through all new elems and make variations
    $rez = [];
    for ($i = 0; $i < $size; $i++) {
        $rez[$i] = [];

        foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
            $current = current($array[$key]);
            $rez[$i][$key] = $current;
        }

        foreach ($keys as $key) {
            if (!next($array[$key])) {
                reset($array[$key]);
            } else {
                break;
            }
        }
    }

    return $rez;
}

die(print_r(variations($arr)));

Result will be an array of all possible combinations of attributes or whatever (see below). I used it for creating Test Woocommerce Variable products.

Hey ! Thanks for sharing, but please, learn more about PSR as the formatting is unbearable, it has serious formatting issues you should never do in a serious place. [This is just an example](https://siderlabs.com/blog/5-php-coding-standards-you-will-love-and-how-to-use-them-adf6a4855696/) of good practices (related to PSR). I will edit and make it more readable and PSR friendly. — matiaslauriti, Jul 30 '21 at 05:22

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 25 '18 at 15:19

Use three nested foreach and push to a $result array at the last level. (Here I used the compact function to reduce the code.)

$provided = [
    'Shirt' => [
        'color' => ['green', 'red'],
        'size' => ['Small', 'Medium'],
    ],
]; // Reduced the provided data to reduce the output for sample purposes.

$result = [];

foreach ($provided as $type => $attributes) {
    foreach ($attributes['color'] as $color) {
        foreach ($attributes['size'] as $size) {
            $result[] = compact('type','color','size');
        }
    }
}

var_dump($result);

Will output

array(4) {
  [0]=>
  array(3) {
    ["type"]=>
    string(5) "Shirt"
    ["color"]=>
    string(5) "green"
    ["size"]=>
    string(5) "Small"
  }
  [1]=>
  array(3) {
    ["type"]=>
    string(5) "Shirt"
    ["color"]=>
    string(5) "green"
    ["size"]=>
    string(6) "Medium"
  }
  [2]=>
  array(3) {
    ["type"]=>
    string(5) "Shirt"
    ["color"]=>
    string(3) "red"
    ["size"]=>
    string(5) "Small"
  }
  [3]=>
  array(3) {
    ["type"]=>
    string(5) "Shirt"
    ["color"]=>
    string(3) "red"
    ["size"]=>
    string(6) "Medium"
  }
}

What if we throw another attribute in there? Is there a way to have a dynamic foreach based on the number of attributes? — Brandon Kiefer, Sep 25 '18 at 15:33

Create a product array with all possible variations

2 Answers2

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