Convert a string structured as a Multidimensional Array to array - php

Question

I have this string:
array(array('1','name1','1','0'),array('2','name2','0','1'),array('3','name3','0','1'),array('4','name4','1','1'),array('5','name5','1','0'));
Stored in $_POST['data']
The string Im receiving is via.load` function where the structure of the string is constructed like so.
I would like to convert it to a multidimensional array via php so I can loop through it easily
So far I`ve reached a workaround by modifying both the string and the method.
Now my string looks like this :
1,name1,1,0,|2,name2,0,1,|3,name3,0,1,|4,name4,1,1,|5,name5,1,0,|
And the method is this
$data2 = $_POST['data2']; /// get data
$data2 = substr_replace($data2 ,"", -2); // eliminate ,|
$data2 = $data2."|"; // add |
$one=explode("|",$data2); // create multidimensional array
$array = array();
foreach ($one as $item){
$array[] = explode(",",$item);
}
I can keep this solution but I would like to know if there is another way of doing it as first requested

Answer 1

There is a better and simple way. You just need to use a foreach loop inside foreach loop.
$data = array(
array('1','name1','1','0'),
array('2','name2','0','1'),
array('3','name3','0','1'),
array('4','name4','1','1'),
array('5','name5','1','0')
);
foreach( $data as $d ) {
foreach( $d as $value ) {
echo $value;
echo '<br />';
}
}
You can check the online Demo

Answer 2

To parse your original string you can use eval()
$string = 'array(array('1','name1','1','0'),array('2','name2','0','1'),array('3','name3','0','1'),array('4','name4','1','1'),array('5','name5','1','0'));';
eval('$array = '.$string);
But eval can/should be disabled on the server, because it comes with security issues.
What i would do is to use JSON, where you would POST the json encoding it with:
json_ecnode( $my_array );
and then decoding it:
$array = json_decode( $_POST['data'], true );