Creating a dynamic PHP array - php

Question

I am new PHP question and I am trying to create an array from the following string of data I have. I haven't been able to get anything to work yet. Does anyone have any suggestions?
my string:
Acct_Status=active,signup_date=2010-12-27,acct_type=GOLD,profile_range=31-35
I want to dynamically create an array called "My_Data" and have id display something like my following, keeping in mind that my array could return more or less data at different times.
My_Data
(
[Acct_Status] => active
[signup_date] => 2010-12-27
[acct_type] => GOLD
[profile_range] => 31-35
)
First time working with PHP, would anyone have any suggestions on what I need to do or have a simple solution? I have tried using an explode, doing a for each loop, but either I am way off on the way that I need to do it or I am missing something. I am getting something more along the lines of the below result.
Array ( [0] => Acct_Status=active [1] => signup_date=2010-12-27 [2] => acct_type=GOLD [3] => profile_range=31-35} )

Answer 1

You would need to explode() the string on , and then in a foreach loop, explode() again on the = and assign each to the output array.
$string = "Acct_Status=active,signup_date=2010-12-27,acct_type=GOLD,profile_range=31-35";
// Array to hold the final product
$output = array();
// Split the key/value pairs on the commas
$outer = explode(",", $string);
// Loop over them
foreach ($outer as $inner) {
// And split each of the key/value on the =
// I'm partial to doing multi-assignment with list() in situations like this
// but you could also assign this to an array and access as $arr[0], $arr[1]
// for the key/value respectively.
list($key, $value) = explode("=", $inner);
// Then assign it to the $output by $key
$output[$key] = $value;
}
var_dump($output);
array(4) {
["Acct_Status"]=>
string(6) "active"
["signup_date"]=>
string(10) "2010-12-27"
["acct_type"]=>
string(4) "GOLD"
["profile_range"]=>
string(5) "31-35"
}

Answer 2

The lazy option would be using parse_str after converting , into & using strtr:
$str = strtr($str, ",", "&");
parse_str($str, $array);
I would totally use a regex here however, to assert the structure a bit more:
preg_match_all("/(\w+)=([\w-]+)/", $str, $matches);
$array = array_combine($matches[1], $matches[2]);
Which would skip any attributes that aren't made up of letters, numbers or hypens. (The question being if that's a viable constraint for your input of course.)

Answer 3

$myString = 'Acct_Status=active,signup_date=2010-12-27,acct_type=GOLD,profile_range=31-35';
parse_str(str_replace(',', '&', $myString), $myArray);
var_dump($myArray);