array stored as string back into array?

Question

just trying to add some setting for the admin in a database entry.

i've saved;

array('aviva'=>'aviva','teacher'=>'teacher');

into the field 'fullPara' but can't seem to get it back into an array? Just spits it out as a string and i've tried eval but not sure where to go from here?

echo $userTypes['fullPara']; // spits out array('aviva'=>'aviva','teacher'=>'teacher');

any pointers welcome!

best, Dan

Answer 1

You want to look into the serialize() and unserialize() functions PHP offers.

Here is an example:

$array = array('1', '3', '4');
$s_array = serialize($array);
// insert that into the db.


// later on when fetching.
$array = unserialize($array_from_db); 
print_r($array); // viola

EDIT

I do NOT recommend this but here is how you would convert it to an array using eval:

eval("\$array = " . $data_from_Db);
print_r($array);

Should get you what you were after.

Answer 2

If you already have a string of "array('aviva'=>'aviva','teacher'=>'teacher'); " and you wish to turn it into an array, this should work...

$str = "array('aviva'=>'aviva','teacher'=>'teacher');"; 
eval("\$foo = $str");
var_dump($foo);

It's really not the best way of doing it though.