how to convert multidimensional array to object in php?

Question

i have a multidimensional array:

$image_path = array('sm'=>$sm,'lg'=>$lg,'secondary'=>$sec_image);

witch looks like this:

[_media_path:protected] => Array
            (
                [main_thumb] => http://example.com/e4150.jpg
                [main_large] => http://example.com/e4150.jpg
                [secondary] => Array
                    (
                        [0] => http://example.com/e4150.jpg
                        [1] => http://example.com/e4150.jpg
                        [2] => http://example.com/e9243.jpg
                        [3] => http://example.com/e9244.jpg
                    )

            )

and i would like to convert it into an object and retain the key names.

Any ideas?

Thanks

edit: $obj = (object)$image_path; doesn't seem to work. i need a different way of looping through the array and creating a object

Answer 1

A quick way to do this is:

$obj = json_decode(json_encode($array));

Explanation

json_encode($array) will convert the entire multi-dimensional array to a JSON string. (php.net/json_encode)

json_decode($string) will convert the JSON string to a stdClass object. If you pass in TRUE as a second argument to json_decode, you'll get an associative array back. (php.net/json_decode)

I don't think the performance here vs recursively going through the array and converting everything is very noticeable, although I'd like to see some benchmarks of this. It works, and it's not going to go away.