Nested Array Iteration... Is there a cleaner approach than this?

PHP
1

Here’s a simplified piece of my array structure. I’m trying to drill down and loop only through the months in the first department contained at the “monthly” level. The problem is, that department’s name is used as the array’s key and that will change per data set.

Is there a better way than calling multiple foreach loops and then breaking the parent loop after it has called its first iteration? At this scaled down version, the code doesn’t look so bad, but this could get out of hand for large more complex data sets.


[
   array => overall
      array => baseline
          n/a
      array => monthly
          array => some_anonymous_department_name
              jan     => 77%
              feb     => 99%
              march => 44%
          array => some_anonymous_department_name_2
              jan     => 79%
              feb     => 33%
              march => 45%
]



foreach($this->data['overall']['monthly'] as $dept) {
   foreach($dept as $month => $score)
      echo $month . '<br />';
   break;
}
2

Not much of one, but…


$dept = array_shift($this->data['overall']['monthly']);
foreach($dept as $month => $score)
  echo $month . '<br />';
3

That’s an angle I hadn’t considered, particularly useful if you don’t need the original data set be kept intact. I’ll keep this strategy in mind. Thanks.