PHP recursive array copy

I have a multidimensional array of arrays (source below), where my keys and values are arbitrary strings. I want to create a new array (desired below), where the hierarchy stays the same, but every KEY is restructured into its own array, with the key itself becoming a ‘title’ value, and any subarrays are continued under ‘children’.

How can I accomplish this using a recursive function that takes &$source and &$destination arrays, and populates the destination array accordingly?

Source Array:

Array (
    [Alpha] => Array (
        [Red] => one
        [Blue] => two
    )
    [Bravo] => Array (
        [Blue] => three
    )
)

Desired Array:

Array (
    [0] => Array (
        [title] => Alpha
        [children] => Array (
                    [0] Array([title] => Red, [children]= > false)
                    [1] Array([title] => Blue, [children]= > false)
        )
    )
    [1] => Array (
        [title] => Bravo
                    [0] Array([title] => Blue, [children]= > false)
        )
    )
)

Note: I don’t care about the final nodes/leafs in my new array.

Answer

You can do te conversion without passing a reference to the destination array.

function convert_array($from){
    if(!is_array($from)){
        return false;
    }
    $to = array();
    foreach($from as $k=>$v){
        $to[] = array(
            'title' => $k,
            'children' => convert_array($v)
        );
    }
    return $to;
}

Codepad example

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Answer