how to remove object from array of objects in foreach loop php

Question

I have a users object returned from the database that looks like this:

[
    {
        "id":1,
        "name":"Bob",
        "category":"admin",
        "email":"[email protected]",
        "phone":"123456789",
        "gender":"male",
    },
    {
        "id":2,
        "name":"John",
        "category":"user",
        "email":"[email protected]",
        "phone":"123456789",
        "gender":"male",
    },
    {
        "id":3,
        "name":"Jane",
        "category":"admin",
        "email":"[email protected]",
        "phone":"123456789",
        "gender":"female",
    },
]

Now I want to loop through all the users object and remove all users whose category attribute is user so that the resulting users object only remains with admin category.

I want to do this with a foreach loop. please how do I go about this or what better ways can I accomplish this?

Answer 1

Assuming the array is in json format, one line code:

$users = array_filter(json_decode($users), function($user) {
    return $user->category != 'user';
});

If it is instead already a valid php array simply remove the json_decode()

Answer 2

I'm guessing the array was in JSON format? Anyways.. I fixed your invalid JSON so you should be able to see how it's done.

$json = '

[{
    "id": 1,
    "name": "Bob",
    "category": "admin",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "phone": "123456789",
    "gender": "male"
}, {
    "id": 2,
    "name": "John",
    "category": "user",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "phone": "123456789",
    "gender": "male"
}, {
    "id": 3,
    "name": "Jane",
    "category": "admin",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "phone": "123456789",
    "gender": "female"
}]

';

$array = json_decode($json, true); //Fixed and converted JSON into PHP Assoc Array 

foreach($array as $k=>$v) { 
    foreach ($array[$k] as $key=>$value) { 
      if ($key === "category" && $value === "user") { //If Value of 2D is equal to user and cat

          unset($array[$k]); //Delete from Array 
      }
    }  
}

var_dump($array); //Output Array

Output

array(2) {
    [0] => array(6) {
        ["id"] => int(1)["name"] => string(3)
        "Bob" ["category"] => string(5)
        "admin" ["email"] => string(14)
        "[email protected]" ["phone"] => string(9)
        "123456789" ["gender"] => string(4)
        "male"
    }[2] => array(6) {
        ["id"] => int(3)["name"] => string(4)
        "Jane" ["category"] => string(5)
        "admin" ["email"] => string(13)
        "[email protected]" ["phone"] => string(9)
        "123456789" ["gender"] => string(6)
        "female"
    }
}

Edit

*As @sevavietl pointed out in the comments, if any other element of the array was called user, then this would be removed. I've changed code to now test the key (category) as well as the value. *