PHP merge array(s) and delete double values

Question

WP outputs an array:

$therapie = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'Therapieen', false);
print_r($therapie);

//the output of print_r
Array ( [0] => Massagetherapie ) 
Array ( [0] => Hot stone )
Array ( [0] => Massagetherapie ) 

How would I merge these arrays to one and delete all the exact double names?

Resulting in something like this:

theArray
(
[0] => Massagetherapie 
[1] => Hot stone
)

[SOLVED] the problem was if you do this in a while loop it wont work here my solution, ty for all reply's and good code.: Its run the loop and pushes every outcome in a array.

<?php query_posts('post_type=therapeut');
$therapeAr = array(); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php $therapie = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'Therapieen', true);
if (strpos($therapie,',') !== false) { //check for , if so make array
$arr = explode(',', $therapie);
array_push($therapeAr, $arr);                       
} else {
array_push($therapeAr, $therapie);
} ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php           
function array_values_recursive($ary)  { //2 to 1 dim array
$lst = array();
foreach( array_keys($ary) as $k ) {

$v = $ary[$k];
if (is_scalar($v)) {

$lst[] = $v;
} elseif (is_array($v)) {

$lst = array_merge($lst,array_values_recursive($v));

}}
return $lst;
}

function trim_value(&$value) //trims whitespace begin&end array
{ 
$value = trim($value); 
}

$therapeAr = array_values_recursive($therapeAr);
array_walk($therapeAr, 'trim_value');
$therapeAr = array_unique($therapeAr);  

foreach($therapeAr as $thera) {
echo '<li><input type="checkbox" value="'.$thera.'">'.$thera.'</input></li>';
} ?>                 

Answer 1

It sounds like the keys of the arrays you are generating are insignificant. If that's the case, you can do a simple merge then determine the unique ones with built in PHP functions:

$array = array_merge($array1, $array2, $array3);
$unique = array_unique($array);

edit: an example:

// Emulate the result of your get_post_meta() call.
$therapie = array(
  array('Massagetherapie'),
  array('Hot stone'),
  array('Massagetherapie'),
);

$array = array();

foreach($therapie as $thera) {
  $array = array_merge($array, $thera);
}

$unique = array_unique($array);

print_r($unique);

Answer 2

The following should do the trick.

$flattened = array_unique(call_user_func_array('array_merge', $therapie));

or the more efficient alternative (thanks to erisco's comment):

$flattened = array_keys(array_flip(
    call_user_func_array('array_merge', $therapie)
));

If $therapie's keys are strings you can drop array_unique.

Alternatively, if you want to avoid call_user_func_array, you can look into the various different ways of flattening a multi-dimensional array. Here are a few (one, two) good questions already on SO detailing several different methods on doing so.

I should also note that this will only work if $therapie is only ever a 2 dimensional array unless you don't want to flatten it completely. If $therapie is more than 2 dimensions and you want to flatten it into 1 dimension, take a look at the questions I linked above.

Relevant doc entries:

array_flip
array_keys
array_merge
array_unique
call_user_func_array

Answer 3

PHP's array_unique() will remove duplicate values from an array.

Answer 4

$tester = array();
foreach($therapie as $thera) {
   array_push($tester, $thera);
}
$result = array_unique($tester);
print_r($result);