How to quickly retrieve tags in array from string?

Question

I have $_GET['tags'] = "apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, cherries"

I need to place the data into an array ($tags).

What is a quick way to trim each item and perform security functions (stripping html, special chars)?

Answer 1

With array_walk() you could write your tag cleaning function separately, and then easily apply it to your incoming data.

function sterilize(&$val,$key)
{
    //do whatever security you need here
    $val = trim($val);
    $val = strip_tags($val);
    //etc
    return htmlspecialchars($val);
}
$bad_values = explode(',',$_GET['tags']);
array_walk($bad_values,'sterilize');