SQL syntax for an array?

[AncientSage]

Hello,

What is the SQL syntax for an array? I've been searching Google for the past hour, and other has turned up.

Additionally, if someone could tell me how to put like...more than one string into that array, thanks.

[fenway]

Huh?  Perhaps you mean an IN clause? Could you give an example?

[AncientSage]

[code]
INSERT INTO config (config_name, config_value) VALUES ('allowed_file_ext', '{\.mid, \.mp3, \.wav, \.aiff}');
[/code]

Where {\.mid, \.mp3, \.wav, \.aiff} is supposed to be the array (each item in the array seperated by a comma), but I don't believe it is working as I want it to.

[fenway]

Yeah, there is no such thing... if you're selecting some from a predefined set, you could use ENUM/SET, but it makes more sense to have one record per pair of name/value.  If that doesn't suffice, you'll need to insert some string that can be subsequently parsed, but that's not always better, and much harder to maintain.

[king arthur]

Try imploding the array into a single string value with some separator that won't cause you problems, and then exploding it when you pull it out of the database again.

[fenway]

That will work, of course -- just consider the long-term implications (i.e. impossible to search properly, hard to edit, etc).

[GoinNuts]

My suggestion would be to keep the fields in the SQL table as distinct values (as opposed to parsing them into a delimited string). If you need to work with the values in an array within your php code, populate the array from the result of the query on the fly.