How to efficiently query nested JSON relationships (reacts_with, affected_by) without redundancy?

1 day ago 1

ARTICLE AD BOX

I am working with a structured JSON dataset where each ingredient contains relational metadata such as:

reacts_with

affected_by

compatible_with

A simplified structure is like this:

{ "category": "surfactants", "ingredients": [ { "name": "sodium stearate", "reacts_with": ["calcium", "magnesium"], "affected_by": ["hard_water"], "compatible_with": ["nonionic_surfactants"] } ] }

The full dataset (for reference): https://cleanformulation.com/data/ingredients-dataset.json

I am trying to find:

all ingredients affected by "hard_water" all ingredients that react with "calcium"

I am currently using a simple PHP loop like this:

<?php $data = json_decode(file_get_contents('ingredients-dataset.json'), true); $result = []; foreach ($data as $category) { foreach ($category['ingredients'] as $ingredient) { if (in_array('hard_water', $ingredient['affected_by'])) { $result[] = $ingredient['name']; } } } print_r($result); ?>

This works for small data, but becomes inefficient as the dataset grows, I have to loop through all categories and ingredients every time
It feels redundant when querying multiple relationships

Is there a better way in PHP to query these relationships without full iteration each time?