I have a problem: I need to turn an array into a string and pass it to a function for debugging output.
I cannot directly output the string with print_r, I need to join it with some other strings and pass it to a function.
Google did not bring any results that display the array in a human-readable way without directly printing them. I need a string which I can pass to another function.
You can use the print_r() function like this:
$myarray = ['a', 'b', 'c'];
$string = print_r($myarray, true);
echo $string;
The optional boolean flag as second parameters makes the function return a string instead of directly sending it to the output.
print_r uses an optional parameter to set to true to return the string instead of outputting it :
$array = array('foo', 'bar', array('baz' => true, 'test' => 42));
$stringifiedArray = print_r($array, true);
/* $stringifiedArray == "
Array
(
[0] => foo
[1] => bar
[2] => Array
(
[baz] => 1
[test] => 42
)
)
"
*/
Otherwise, I can see two ways, but both are not as easily readable by a human :
json_encode : $stringifiedArray = json_encode($array, true);
// $stringifiedArray == "["foo","bar",{"baz":true,"test":42}]"
serialize : $stringifiedArray = serialize($array, true);
// $stringifiedArray == "a:3:{i:0;s:3:"foo";i:1;s:3:"bar";i:2;a:2:{s:3:"baz";b:1;s:4:"test";i:42;}}"
You could also try <?php implode(', ', $array); ?>
$str = print_r($someData,true)