undesrtanding get_post_meta function

Question

Is there any way to avoid that when you don’t specify a $key ('') and set $single to true in get_post_meta, it returns all keys still with an array of values, instead of returning a single value only .

$meta = get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), '', true);
print_r($meta);
//This is giving me:
//Array ( [key_1] => Array ( [0] => value_1 ), [key_2] => Array ( [0] => value_2 ) )
//And I will expect:
//Array ( [key_1] => value_1, [key_2] => value_2 )

I know that I can access the data writing array[key_1][0], but I don't understand why, considering that I'm declaring $single as TRUE.

I might be missing something...

Answer 1

get_post_meta() calls get_metadata(), the parameter description of which says:

$single (bool) (Optional) If true, return only the first value of the specified meta_key. This parameter has no effect if meta_key is not specified.

Default value: false

So, since you are passing '' as the meta_key, the $single parameter is ignored.

Does that explain it?

Edit:

If you only want the 1st value for each meta key, then just do the following:

array_map ('array_shift', get_post_meta (get_the_ID (), '')) ;