Question

hey, i have this path name from an input element interesse[angebote][flurfuerderfahrzeuge] as a string in my php var. now i need convert it somehow (with regex or explode()) so it looks like this: $_POST['interesse']['angebote']['flurfuerderfahrzeuge'] and the use eval() to get the value. But I’m sure there must be a much easier way do this.
Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

eval() is evil(). And there are some faster options to avoid it in this case.

If you just want to convert the syntax, then I have a regex:

  $name = '$' . preg_replace("/\[([^\]]+)\]/", '["$1"]', $path);

If your input string not only contains the path, but also an value (attach a dummy value if you must), then you can just use parse_str() to extract the array names into a real PHP array:

  $path = "whatever[subname][deepnesting]=1";
  parse_str($path, $as_var);
  print_r($as_var);

Tell something more about your input data.

---

Okay, just figured out what you mean. You want to submerge in the $_POST array. Then use step-wise references like so:

$path = "xxxx[yyyy][zzzz]";
$ref = & $_POST;

preg_match_all("/\w+/", $path, $uu);
foreach ($uu[0] as $subname) {
   $ref = & $ref[$subname];
}

print_r($ref);   // = $_POST[xxxx][yyyy][zzzz]