get_category_parents to array wordpress - php

Question

Ok So I'm using wordpress and PHP.
Basicly I get a chosen category from a dropdown menu. I then find it's parents.
But then comes the part where I seem to fail. The output of $parents is a string with the names instead of the ID's.
So I try to get each word from the string into an array.
And loop through them and convert them to their ID number.
I commented out where it doesnt seem to work. What am I doing wrong?
//Create array
$categoriesArray = [];
//Get choice from wp-dropdown
$selected_val = $_POST['cat'];
//Get parents from choice divided by (this seems to output a string)
$parents = get_category_parents( $selected_val, true, ',' );
/*
//Make array from string
$categoriesArray = explode(",",$parents);
for ($i = 0; $i < count($categoriesArray); $i++) {
{
$categoriesArray[$i] = get_cat_ID($categoriesArray[$i]);
}
*/
//the array should look something like this.
//$categoriesArray = ["21","44"];

Answer 1

try this,
function get_level($cat, $level = 0)
{
if ($cat->category_parent == 0) {
return $level;
} else {
$level++;
$cat = get_category($cat->category_parent);
return get_level($cat, $level);
}
}
if (is_category()) {
$cat = get_query_var('cat');
$your_cat = get_category($cat);
echo get_level($your_cat);
}

Answer 2

It had to do with the name of the category. I needed to use the slug instead of the name.
Here is my code that works. I can now make a new post and give it a category with their parents included!
//Create array
$categoriesArray = [];
//Get choice from wp-dropdown
$selected_val = $_POST['cat'];
//Get parents from choice divided by ,
$parents = get_category_parents( $selected_val, true, ',',false);
//Make array from string
$categoriesArray = explode(",",$parents);
for ($i = 0; $i < count($categoriesArray); $i++)
{
$categoriesArray[$i] = get_cat_ID($categoriesArray[$i]);
}