Array unique and flip in PHP - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Array unique and flip

📖 Scenario: You have a list of fruits with some duplicates. You want to find the unique fruits and then flip the list so that fruits become keys and their positions become values.

🎯 Goal: Create a PHP program that removes duplicate fruits from an array and then flips the array so that fruit names become keys and their indexes become values.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called fruits with the exact values: 'apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana'

Create a variable called uniqueFruits that holds the unique values from fruits

Create a variable called flippedFruits that flips the keys and values of uniqueFruits

Print the flippedFruits array

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Removing duplicates and flipping arrays is useful when you want to quickly find the position of unique items or create lookup tables.

💼 Career

These skills are important for data cleaning, preparing data for search, and optimizing lookups in PHP web applications.

1

Create the initial array

Create an array called fruits with these exact values in order: 'apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana'

PHP

# Create the array called fruits with the given values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create the array and separate values with commas.

2

Remove duplicates from the array

Create a variable called uniqueFruits that holds the unique values from the fruits array using the array_unique() function

PHP

<?php
$fruits = ['apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana'];
# Create uniqueFruits using array_unique on fruits
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use array_unique($fruits) to get unique values.

3

Flip the unique array

Create a variable called flippedFruits that flips the keys and values of the uniqueFruits array using the array_flip() function

PHP

<?php
$fruits = ['apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana'];
$uniqueFruits = array_unique($fruits);
# Create flippedFruits using array_flip on uniqueFruits
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use array_flip($uniqueFruits) to swap keys and values.

4

Print the flipped array

Print the flippedFruits array using print_r() to display the result

PHP

<?php
$fruits = ['apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana'];
$uniqueFruits = array_unique($fruits);
$flippedFruits = array_flip($uniqueFruits);
# Print flippedFruits array
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print_r($flippedFruits); to print the array in a readable format.