BetterPHP

How do I insert an array into a database? Lets say I want to have tags for posts. How should I go about this? Should I just have it insert

array('tag', 'foo', 'foobar');

or is there some other magical thing I can do?

Also, I could probably figure this out on my own but, how do I divide tags up? If I had a textbox with

foo, tag, foobar, steve, bob, fred

Then how do I insert that into an array?

You use the explode() function to create an array from a comma separated list.
http://php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php

There are many different methods of getting the array in your database. You could insert is a string using implode()
http://php.net/manual/en/function.implode.php

or you could create a foreach loop and run a query for every tag? ( not very effective, performance wise, but it works )

foreach($tags as $tag){
insert into `tags` $tag;
}

The third option would not work... I would be trying for something like

post_title  post_id  post_body  post_tags

Ooh I could just insert the comma separated tags into the database and when search or outputting, I could just explode it

FrederickGeek8 wrote:Ooh I could just insert the comma separated tags into the database and when search or outputting, I could just explode it

yes.

There are also the serialize() and unserialize() functions

$some_array = array(1, 2, 3);

if you do

$string = serialize($some_array);

$string is now an encoded version of the array $some_array that you can store easily, to get back to the original array you use the opposite function

$some_array = unserialize($string);

The explode method would work fine too but this is a bit more robust, it won't break if one of your values has a comma in it.

jacek wrote:There are also the serialize() and unserialize() functions

$some_array = array(1, 2, 3);

if you do

$string = serialize($some_array);

$string is not an encoded version of the array $some_array that you can store easily, to get back to the original array you use the opposite function

$some_array = unserialize($string);

The explode method would work fine too but this is a bit more robust, it won't break if one of your values has a comma in it.

Ooh this seems nice :3 thanks!