referencing php variables inside of an array

Question

I have a small problem that I cannot seem to wrap my head around and hoping someone here might be able to find the problem. I have an variable named $data which is an array of string values and when I use the following code everything works fine.

$data = array(1,2,3,4,5);

$users = implode("," , $data);

echo ($users);

This will produce something like 1,2,3,4,5 which is what I expected, but if I try to follow the same logic on the following piece of code then the result is an empty string.

$data = array(1,2,3,4,5);

$users = implode("," , $data);

$MyArray = array(
    $user_ids => array($users)
)

My question then is how do I need to reference the $users variable in this array so it will produce the results I need. (ie 1,2,3,4,5 ...)

Thx, Amy

Answer 1

You don't need to make your data array into a string and convert it back into an array. You could just insert the array into another array and reference it that way. For example:

$data = array(1,2,3,4,5);

$MyArray[] = $data;

To recall this data:

foreach($MyArray as $array){
echo implode(',',$array);
}

Answer 2

Not sure exactly what you want the key to be but right now you are using a variable as a key:

$users = implode("," , $data);
$user_ids = 'users_id_keyname';

$MyArray = array(
  $user_ids => $users 
);

echo $MyArray['users_id_keyname']; // outputs 1,2,3,4,5
echo $MyArray[$user_ids]; // outputs 1,2,3,4,5

You probably want to just use the string as the key:

$users = implode("," , $data);

$MyArray = array(
  'user_ids' => $users 
);

echo $MyArray['user_ids']; // outputs 1,2,3,4,5