How to pass an array within a query string?

Question

Is there a standard way of passing an array through a query string?

To be clear, I have a query string with multiple values, one of which would be an array value.

Answer 1

You can use http_build_query to generate a URL-encoded querystring from an array in PHP. Whilst the resulting querystring will be expanded, you can decide on a unique separator you want as a parameter to the http_build_query method, so when it comes to decoding, you can check what separator was used. If it was the unique one you chose, then that would be the array querystring otherwise it would be the normal querystrings.