Converting strings and arrays

[mrdhood]

Hello, I'm working on a script for my chat software that will convert an array into a string and then can easily later on be put back into an array, I've already done this but when I did it I didn't think of sub-arrays.

 

For example of an array:

$user_info = array(
'username' => 'test',
'other_info' => array(
  'var' => 'value',
  'var2' => 'value2'
)
);

 

and that would change into something like this:

user_info:{username:test, other_info:{var:value,var2:value2}}

 

I do not care what the string looks like, above was just an example, any separators can be used. I just can't have it messed up by user input (a username with a character of a separator or something).

 

The code I have works for this:

 

$user_info = array('id' => 1, 'username' => 2);

 

and it outputs this as the string

 

id=1&username=2&

 

The code I use is:

 

function strtoarray($str)
{
	$info = explode("&", $str);
	if (is_array($info))
		foreach ($info as $data)
		{
			$data = explode("=", $data);
			if (is_array($data))
			{
				if (!empty($data[0]))
				{
					if ($array[$data[0]])
					{
						if (!is_array($array[$data[0]]))
						{
							$array[$data[0]] = array($array[$data[0]]);
						}
						$array[$data[0]][] = stripslashes(urldecode($data[1]));
					}
					else
					{
						$array[$data[0]] = stripslashes(urldecode($data[1]));
					}
				}
			}
		}
	return $array;
}
function arraytostr($array)
{
	foreach ($array as $key => $value)
	{
		$str .= $key . "=" . addslashes(urlencode($value)) . "&";
	}
	return $str;
}

 

I'm really not sure if regex is the way to go with this or what and that's really why I'm asking for help. I know I could do this with more explodes and what not but I feel as if there's probably a better way to do this and I'm just over complicating it.

 

Thank you in advance.

[JonnoTheDev]

<?php
$user_info = array('id' => 1, 'username' => 2);
/*
convert to a string
*/
$user_info = implode('&', $user_info);
echo 'String: '.$user_info.'<br />';
/*
convert from a string to an array
*/
$user_info = explode('&', $user_info);
echo 'Array:<br /><pre>';
print_r($user_info);
echo '</pre>';


?>

[mrdhood]

That won't work for the sub-arrays though.

[JonnoTheDev]

Can I ask why you want to convert a multi-dimensional array into a string? Are you saving it into a database?

[mrdhood]

Yes.

I'm making a chat room and instead of having 9 fields in the message table I have a couple and then user_info which consists of username=mrdhood&user_color=aa0000&message_color=aa0000 well the function I posted works great. Except now I got the idea to pass "actions" the same way except that one is gonna require arrays to be passed instead of strings.

[anupamsaha]

Will serialize() and unserialize() help you?

 

http://php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php

http://php.net/manual/en/function.unserialize.php

[JonnoTheDev]

Then all you need to do is serialize & unserialize the data.

 

/*
save data
*/
$array = serialize($array):
mysql_query("INSERT INTO table SET id=1, text='".mysql_real_escape_string($array)."'");

 

/*
retrieve data
*/
$res = mysql_query("SELECT text FROM table WHERE id=1");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($res);
/*
unserialize data
*/
$array = unserialize($row['text']);
echo "<pre>";
print_r($array);
echo "</pre>";

 

http://uk2.php.net/serialize

http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/function.unserialize.php

[mrdhood]

Jesus.. I feel like an idiot lol.

Thank you guys.

Sad thing is I use serialize in javascript for another part of the chat system.

[mrdhood]

How can I assure that no user-submitted data messes with these functions? I use mysql_real_escape(), anything else?

[JonnoTheDev]

How can I assure that no user-submitted data messes with these functions? I use mysql_real_escape(), anything else?

You may want to use strip_tags() to remove any HTML.

You could also use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection as opposed to mysql_real_escape_string()

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/best-way-to-stop-sql-injection-in-php