Comparison of data downloaded from the database - php

Question

I have a question regarding php and sql. In the database I have a shop table 'x' in which there is a tags column containing mixed tags from which to filter the collection for the product using the operator 'like'. I have to compare the filtered collection with the collections in column 1 of the store '. If these two collections are equal, then from the store's table in column 2 I can retrieve the appropriate value and enter it into the csv file.
In php I have downloaded the column with tags from the 'x' store, but I have no idea how to add to the category that I searched for by query and compare it with the data from the store 's' column. I tried to explode the resulting strings from the foreach loop with explode () to get an array from each cell in the column, but got the primitive array that was fetched from the database. I also tried a regular for loop but it also failed.
How can you get this one value from the tags column and compare it with the data from another column ?
public static function findEmpikCategory()
{
$empik_lilante_categories = MysqlProvider::getEmpikCategory(); // empik and lilante categories from empik_categories in which the 'collection' is included
// get a specific category (lilante_category) from empik_categories
foreach($empik_lilante_categories as $categories)
{
$lilante_category_from_empik[] = $categories['lilante_category'];
}
return $lilante_category_from_empik;
}
//$lilante_category = explode(",", $lilante_category_for_offers_products, 0);
// searching lilante categories from the shopifyProductsLilante array
public static function findLilanteCategory()
{
$empik_cateries_equals_lilante_categories = MysqlProvider::getEmpikCategoryEqualLilanteCategory(); // empik categories corresponding to lilante categories
$lilante_category_to_check = CSVFileGenerator::findEmpikCategory();
$lilante_category_for_offers_products = MysqlProvider::getLilanteCategoryByOffersEmpik(); // lilante categories for all empik products
//print_r($lilante_category_to_check);
foreach($lilante_category_for_offers_products as $lilanteCategories)
{
foreach($lilanteCategories as $lilanteCategory)
{
echo "<br/>";
//print_r($lilanteCategory);
echo "<br/>";
print_r(explode(",", $lilanteCategory, 0));
//echo "<br/>";
// echo gettype($lilanteCategory) . "<br>"; // each element is a string
// print_r($lilanteCategory);
}
}
foreach($lilante_category_to_check as $lilanteCategoryFromEmpik)
{
echo "<br/>";
print_r($lilanteCategoryFromEmpik);
echo "<br/>";
}
//fclose($file_open);
return ;
}