Question

I’m trying to deserialize an array from an URL I’ve sent from a JQuery Ajax call to a PHP script in the server.

What I have done

I’ve been sending variables with values to the server successfully with jQuery Ajax this way:

// A simple text from an HTML element:
var price = $("#price option:selected").val();
// Yet another simple text:
var term1 = $('#term1').val();

Then I prepare the data to be sent via Ajax this way:

var data = 'price=' + price + '&term1=' + term1;
//if I alert it, I get this: price=priceString&term1=termString

And send it with jQuery Ajax like this:

$.ajax({
        url: "script.php",
        type: "GET",
        data: data,
        cache: false,
        dataType:'html',
        success: function (html) {
            // Do something successful
        }
});

Then I get it in the server this way:

$price = (isset($_GET['price'])) ? $_GET['price'] : null;
$term1 = (isset($_GET['term1'])) ? $_GET['term1'] : null;

And I’m able to use my variables easily as I need. However, I need to do this with an array.

Main question

Reading a lot, I’ve managed to learn the professional way to send an array to the server: serialize it! I’ve learnt this way to do it with jQuery:

var array_selected = [];
// This is used to get all options in a listbox, no problems here:
$('#SelectIt option:not(:selected), #SelectIt option:selected').each(function() {
   array_selected.push({ name: $(this).val(), value: $(this).html().substring($(this).html().indexOf(' '))});
});
var array_serialized = jQuery.param(array_selected);
// If I alert this I get my array serialized successfully with in the form of number=string:
//Ex. 123=stringOne&321=StringTwo

This seems to be right. I add this to the data as before:

var data = 'price=' + price + '&' + array_selected + '&term1=' + term1;
//if I alert it, I get this: price=priceString&term1=termString&123=stringOne&321=StringTwo

How do I reconstruct (unserialize) my array in the server? I’ve tried the same as before:

$array_serialized = (isset($_GET['array_serialized'])) ? $_GET['array_serialized'] : null;

with no success! Any ideas why? How can I get my serialized array passed this way in the server as another array which PHP can handle so I can use it?

Or am I complicating my life myself needlessly? All I want is to send an array to the server.

Answer 1

If you name a variable with [] in the end of it, it will create an array out of the values passed with that name.

For example, http://www.example.com/?data[]=hello&data[]=world&data[]=test, will result in the array $_GET["data"] == array('hello', 'world', 'test'); created in PHP.

In the same way, you can create an associative array in PHP: http://www.example.com/?data[first]=foo&data[second]=bar will result in $_GET["data"] == array("first" => "foo", "second" => "bar");

BTW, you might be interested in using jQuery’s .serialize() or .serializeArray(), if those fit your client side serializing needs.