Converting exploded array into string - php

Question

In the project that I am creating, I have a mysql column that is an array of different pieces of data from the database. These pieces of data have info that I want to display. In order to separate these items in the array I used,
$get_query = mysql_query('Select array FROM data');
while($dataRow = mysql_fetch_assoc($getfrnd_query)) {
$array = $dataRow['array'];
if($array != "") {
$data_from_array_column = explode("," $array);
$getdata = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM info WHERE item = $data_from_array_column");
//Then I used a mysql_fetch_assoc to get data based on the item.
}
}
When I run this code, I get an error "Array to string conversion on the line with $getdata".
Is there any way to get this to work?
Thank you.

Answer 1

The problem is that explode returns an array containing the strings in between the character(s) you used as a delimiter (, in your case), not a string.
PHP is getting mad because it doesn't know how to convert your array to a string automatically. So, you will need to convert it yourself. The options are:
You want to select the row where item is equal to the nth element in the array, $data_from_array_column. If this is the case, you need to insert the following line of code after your explode:
$data_from_array_column = $data_from_array_column[0];
If you want to select where it matches any of the elements in the $data_from_array_column array, it will get more complicated. You would need to add this line after the explode:
$data_from_array_column = implode("' OR item='",$data_from_array_column);
and change your query on the next line to:
$getdata = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM info WHERE item='$data_from_array_column'");
This will create a MySQL query that looks some thing like this:
SELECT * FROM info WHERE item='foo' OR item='bar' OR item='bla'