How can I explode and trim whitespace?

You can do the following using array_map:

$new_arr = array_map('trim', explode(',', $str));

php explode trim higher-order-functions

An improved answer

preg_split ('/(\s*,*\s*)*,+(\s*,*\s*)*/', 'red,     green thing ,,              ,,   blue ,orange');

Result:

Array(    [0] => red    [1] => green thing    [2] => blue    [3] => orange)

This:

php explode trim higher-order-functions

The following also takes care of white-spaces at start/end of the input string:

$new_arr = preg_split('/\s*,\s*/', trim($str));

and this is a minimal test with white-spaces in every sensible position:

$str = ' first , second , third , fourth, fifth ';$new_arr = preg_split('/\s*,\s*/', trim($str));var_export($str);

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