How to Extract the First N Elements from an Array in PHP

Retrieving the first N elements of an array is a common task in PHP development. This concise guide will provide you with the most effective method to accomplish this.

Solution: Employing array_slice()

PHP offers the robust array_slice() function to extract a specified subset of elements from an array. Its syntax is as follows:

array_slice($array, start, length, preserve_keys)

Example:

Consider the following array:

$input = array("a", "b", "c", "d", "e");

To obtain the first three elements of this array:

$output = array_slice($input, 0, 3);

This will return an array containing "a", "b", and "c" in that order.

Note:

By default, array_slice() resets the numeric indices of the output array. However, if the original indices are significant, you can set the preserve_keys parameter to true to maintain them. This parameter is available in PHP versions 5.0.2 and later.

For instance:

$output = array_slice($input, 2, 3, true);

This would produce the following output:

array([3] => 'c', [4] => 'd', [5] => 'e');

With this knowledge, you can confidently retrieve the first N elements of an array in PHP using array_slice().