Question

I have been looking for an answer for this, but none seem to actually help my specific situation. I’m trying to post a list of words and then remove the duplicate data (words) that come from the form.

For some reason I can’t seem to get array_unique to work. PHP keeps giving me errors saying my post array is a string. But if I try using explode, it says I’m using an array. Really confused right now and very frustrated.

My code is simple:

if(!empty($_POST['keywords']))
{
    $posted = $_POST['keywords'];

    $posted = array_unique($posted);

    echo $posted;
}

I’m not necessarily looking for an exact answer, but some guidance so I can better understand what I’m doing wrong here.

The form:

    <form action="<?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post">
    <p>
        <textarea name="keywords" rows="20" columns="120"></textarea>
    </p>

    <p>
        <input type="submit" name="submit" />
    </p>
</form>

Answer 1

Consider first splitting the keywords argument by spaces, then finding the unique values:

$posted = array_unique(explode(' ', str_replace("\n", ' ', $posted)));