Grouping arrays in PHP

Solution 1:

Just iterate over the array and use another array for the groups. It should be fast enough and is probably faster than the overhead involved when using sqlite or similar.

$groups = array();
foreach ($data as $item) {
    $key = $item['key_to_group'];
    if (!isset($groups[$key])) {
        $groups[$key] = array(
            'items' => array($item),
            'count' => 1,
        );
    } else {
        $groups[$key]['items'][] = $item;
        $groups[$key]['count'] += 1;
    }
}

Solution 2:

$groups = array();
foreach($items as $item)
    $groups[$item['value']][] = $item;
foreach($groups as $value => $items)
    echo 'Group ' . $value . ' has ' . count($items) . ' ' . (count($items) == 1 ? 'item' : 'items') . "\n";