Count Array values php

Question

I am using laravel, I am getting this error when trying to count the valuse of this array.

Error:array_count_values(): Can only count STRING and INTEGER values!

the function:

public function test()
{
  $test = \DB::table('surveys')->where('company_id', '=', 1)->select('rd1')->get()->toArray();;
  $c = array_count_values($test);
  $val = array_search(max($c), $c);
  return view ('companies.test', compact('val'));

}

here is a var_dump of $test:

  array:4 [▼
  0 => {#204 ▼
    +"rd1": "option1"
  }
  1 => {#206 ▼
    +"rd1": "option1"
  }
  2 => {#207 ▼
    +"rd1": "option1"
  }
  3 => {#208 ▼
    +"rd1": "option1"
  }
]

Answer 1

Your array is 2d which array_count_values doesn't like. You can either perform a loop and count the values yourself, or use something like array_column to get an array of the value from just the one column. Example:

array_count_values(array_column($test, $columnName))

array_column will get an array of values from just the one column you specify, which in your case is a string and that returned array can be passed to array_count_values to get the result you want.

Of course though, as someone else commented, this grouping and counting can be done by the database much more efficiently (you would be passing back less data and the database can be optimized to return queries like this with indexes). Here is another question that covers this.

You could then turn that back into a similar array with just array_column like:

\DB::table('surveys')
    ->where('company_id', '=', 1)
    ->select('rd1', \DB::raw('count(*) as total')
    ->groupBy('rd1')
    ->get()
    ->toArray();;
array_column($test, 'total', 'rd1');

Answer 2

The built-in function array_count_values() can't calculate the frequency if the elements are not strings or numbers. You can, however, easily perform a loop to do so:

foreach ($array as $e)
    $frequency[$e] =+ 1;

This would basically do the same as the built-in. Note that the elements are used as keys for the final frequency array (and you can imagina that if $e is not a valid key (string or number) it will fail). In your case, you need to use as key a property of your element. For example, if it is another array:

foreach ($test as $e)
    $frequency[$e['survey_name']] += 1;

Or properties/methods of an object:

foreach ($test as $e)
    $frequency[$e->myColumn()] += 1;