Is there a way to retrieve specific "columns" from a PHP array?

Question

I have an array of arrays with the following structure:

array(array('page' => 'page1', 'name' => 'pagename1')
      array('page' => 'page2', 'name' => 'pagename2')
      array('page' => 'page3', 'name' => 'pagename3'))

Is there a built-in function that returns a new array containing only the "name" key value? So I would get:

array('pagename1', 'pagename2', 'pagename3')

Answer 1

Starting in PHP 5.5 you can use array_column():

<?php
$samples=array(
            array('page' => 'page1', 'name' => 'pagename1'),
            array('page' => 'page2', 'name' => 'pagename2'),
            array('page' => 'page3', 'name' => 'pagename3')
            );
$names = array_column($samples, 'name');
print_r($names);

View actual operation

Answer 2

Why does it have to be a built-in function? No, no, write it yourself.

This is a nice and simple approach compared to others in this thread.

$namearray = array();

foreach ($array as $item) {
    $namearray[] = $item['name'];
}

In some cases, if the key is not named, you can do this

$namearray = array();

foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
    $namearray [] = $value;
}