How Can I Efficiently Pass Arrays as URL Parameters in PHP?

Passing Arrays as URL Parameters

Often, there are situations where you need to pass an array to a script via a URL parameter. There are various approaches to this problem, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Naive Approaches

Attempting to pass an array as a URL parameter without any processing can lead to messy results. Concatenating the values into a single string results in an unwieldy parameter:

$url = 'http://www.example.com?aParam[]=value1&aParam[]=value2&aParam[]=value3';

The http_build_query() Function

Fortunately, PHP provides a convenient solution: the http_build_query() function. It takes an associative array as input and returns a URL-encoded query string.

$data = array(
    1,
    4,
    'a' => 'b',
    'c' => 'd'
);

$query = http_build_query(array('aParam' => $data));

This will produce the following query string:

aParam%5B0%5D=1&aParam%5B1%5D=4&aParam%5Ba%5D=b&aParam%5Bc%5D=d

Notice how the function automatically handles the necessary escaping ([ => [ and ] => ]). This ensures that the query string is correctly formed.

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