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Associative Arrays

Associative arrays are used to store key value pairs. The keys can be strings or numbers. The values can be any type. If you are coming from the JavaScript world, associative arrays are similar to object literals or dictionaries in Python.

$user = [
  'name' => 'John',
  'email' => 'john@gmail.com',
  'password' => 'secret',
  'hobbies' => ['Tennis', 'Video Games']
];

var_dump($user);

We created an associative array with the name, email, password and hobbies keys. The hobbies key has an array as its value. So we can embed arrays inside arrays.

Accessing Elements​

We can access elements in an associative array using the key.

echo $user['name']; // John
echo $user['email']; // john@gmail

If we try to access a key that doesn't exist, we will get a notice.

echo $user['gender'];

Adding Elements​

We can add elements to an associative array by assigning a value to a new key.

$user['address'] = '123 Main Street';

Removing Elements​

We can remove elements from an associative array using the unset function.

unset($user['address']);