Carefull when using iterator_to_array(). Because it flattens down your subiterators, elements with the same keys will overwrite eachother.

For example:

<?php

$iterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(
    new RecursiveArrayIterator([
        ['foo', 'bar'],
        ['baz', 'qux']
    ])
);

foreach ($iterator as $element) {
    echo $element;
}

?>

This will output all 4 elements as expected:

string(3) "foo"
string(3) "bar"
string(3) "baz"
string(3) "qux"

While doing:

<?php

var_dump(iterator_to_array($iterator));

?>

will output an array with only the last 2 elements:

array(2) {
  [0]=>
  string(3) "baz"
  [1]=>
  string(3) "qux"
}