For those that may not be able to update to PHP 5.5 anytime soon but still want some of the cool features that come with it, there's one more option for adding that to your current PHP install. Ben Ramsey has released a userland-version of array_column, the function that returns the values from one column for all values in an array.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how my patch for array_column() was merged into the development branch for PHP 5.5 in preparation for the beta release. I received a lot of great feedback and many kind words. Then, on June 20, the PHP team announced the general availability version of 5.5.0. With that, array_column() was released to the world for general use.

Many still use earlier versions of PHP, though. While the functionality of array_column() is simple enough to implement on your own in userland code, I’ve released a small library that implements it in userland code exactly as it’s implemented in the core, complete with the same PHP error messages and warnings.

The library has no dependencies and can be dropped into an existing application easily - just grab the source and include the needed file when you want to use the function (or it can be installed via Composer too).