insert an array into mysql database - php

Question

I have the following array which I would like to insert into mysql database.
Item[0] = Soccer
Item[1] = Rugby
Item[2] = Football
Item[3] = Netball
Item[4] = Hockey
I am using the following function to insert into the database, located in functions.php:
//Capture items
function item($register_data)
{
array_walk($register_data,'array_clean');
$fields = ' '.implode(',',array_keys($register_data)).' ';
$data = '\''.implode('\',\'',$register_data).'\'';
//Insert user Data into the database
$query = "INSERT INTO items ($fields) VALUES ($data)";
mysql_query($query);
}
Now this is how I insert:
for($i =0;$i<4;$i++)
{
$item = array($i = item[i]);
}
//Call the function to insert into the database
item($item);
This method doesn't seem to work. Please assist

Answer 1

PHP has a built in serialize & deserialize functions (http://php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php) for that. You can pass any object or array to it, and it will return a serialized string, which you can store in a single field in the database.

Answer 2

Since your items table has two columns, one of which is id (auto increment) you're going to want to skip over it and only specify the second column ItemName. This is described in the mysql documentation on this page.
Lets say you want to insert 5 sports in this table:
$sports[0] = "Soccer";
$sports[1] = "Rugby";
$sports[2] = "Football";
$sports[3] = "Netball";
$sports[4] = "Hockey";
You'll want the query to look something along these lines:
INSERT INTO items (ItemName) VALUES ('Soccer'), ('Rugby'), ('Football'), ('Netball'), ('Hockey');
The code would look something like this:
function insert($insert_data)
{
$fields = implode(', ', $insert_data);
$data = '(\''.implode('\'), (\'', $insert_data).'\')';
//mysql_query("INSERT INTO items (ItemName) VALUES $data;");
echo "INSERT INTO items (ItemName) VALUES $data;";
}
$sports = array();
$sports[0] = "Soccer";
$sports[1] = "Rugby";
$sports[2] = "Football";
$sports[3] = "Netball";
$sports[4] = "Hockey";
insert($sports);
You may also want to sanitize the strings first and take a look at mysqli since mysql is pretty outdated.