Convert PostgreSQL array to PHP array

If you have PostgreSQL 9.2 you can do something like this:

SELECT array_to_json(pg_array_result) AS new_name FROM tbl1;

The result will return the array as JSON

Then on the php side issue:

$array = json_decode($returned_field);

You can also convert back. Here are the JSON functions page

As neither of these solutions work with multidimentional arrays, so I offer here my recursive solution that works with arrays of any complexity:

function pg_array_parse($s, $start = 0, &$end = null){    if (empty($s) || $s[0] != '{') return null;    $return = array();    $string = false;    $quote='';    $len = strlen($s);    $v = '';    for ($i = $start + 1; $i < $len; $i++) {        $ch = $s[$i];        if (!$string && $ch == '}') {            if ($v !== '' || !empty($return)) {                $return[] = $v;            }            $end = $i;            break;        } elseif (!$string && $ch == '{') {            $v = pg_array_parse($s, $i, $i);        } elseif (!$string && $ch == ','){            $return[] = $v;            $v = '';        } elseif (!$string && ($ch == '"' || $ch == "'")) {            $string = true;            $quote = $ch;        } elseif ($string && $ch == $quote && $s[$i - 1] == "\\") {            $v = substr($v, 0, -1) . $ch;        } elseif ($string && $ch == $quote && $s[$i - 1] != "\\") {            $string = false;        } else {            $v .= $ch;        }    }    return $return;}

I haven't tested it too much, but looks like it works.Here you have my tests with results:

var_export(pg_array_parse('{1,2,3,4,5}'));echo "\n";/*array (  0 => '1',  1 => '2',  2 => '3',  3 => '4',  4 => '5',)*/var_export(pg_array_parse('{{1,2},{3,4},{5}}'));echo "\n";/*array (  0 =>   array (    0 => '1',    1 => '2',  ),  1 =>   array (    0 => '3',    1 => '4',  ),  2 =>   array (    0 => '5',  ),)*/var_export(pg_array_parse('{dfasdf,"qw,,e{q\"we",\'qrer\'}'));echo "\n";/*array (  0 => 'dfasdf',  1 => 'qw,,e{q"we',  2 => 'qrer',)*/var_export(pg_array_parse('{,}'));echo "\n";/*array (  0 => '',  1 => '',)*/var_export(pg_array_parse('{}'));echo "\n";/*array ()*/var_export(pg_array_parse(null));echo "\n";// NULLvar_export(pg_array_parse(''));echo "\n";// NULL

P.S.: I know this is a very old post, but I couldn't find any solution for postgresql pre 9.2

Reliable function to parse PostgreSQL (one-dimensional) array literal into PHP array, using regular expressions:

function pg_array_parse($literal){    if ($literal == '') return;    preg_match_all('/(?<=^\{|,)(([^,"{]*)|\s*"((?:[^"\\\\]|\\\\(?:.|[0-9]+|x[0-9a-f]+))*)"\s*)(,|(?<!^\{)(?=\}$))/i', $literal, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);    $values = [];    foreach ($matches as $match) {        $values[] = $match[3] != '' ? stripcslashes($match[3]) : (strtolower($match[2]) == 'null' ? null : $match[2]);    }    return $values;}print_r(pg_array_parse('{blah,blah blah,123,,"blah \\"\\\\ ,{\100\x40\t\daő\ő",NULL}'));// Array// (//     [0] => blah//     [1] => blah blah//     [2] => 123//     [3] =>//     [4] => blah "\ ,{@@ daőő//     [5] =>// )var_dump(pg_array_parse('{,}'));// array(2) {//   [0] =>//   string(0) ""//   [1] =>//   string(0) ""// }print_r(pg_array_parse('{}'));var_dump(pg_array_parse(null));var_dump(pg_array_parse(''));// Array// (// )// NULL// NULLprint_r(pg_array_parse('{または, "some string without a comma", "a string, with a comma"}'));// Array// (//     [0] => または//     [1] => some string without a comma//     [2] => a string, with a comma// )