How do I create a comma-separated list from an array in PHP?

I know how to loop through items of an array using foreach and append a comma, but it's always a pain having to take off the final comma. Is there an easy PHP way of doing it?

$fruit = array('apple', 'banana', 'pear', 'grape');

Ultimately I want

$result = "apple, banana, pear, grape"

Solution 1:

You want to use implode for this.

ie: $commaList = implode(', ', $fruit);

There is a way to append commas without having a trailing one. You'd want to do this if you have to do some other manipulation at the same time. For example, maybe you want to quote each fruit and then separate them all by commas:

$prefix = $fruitList = '';
foreach ($fruits as $fruit)
{
    $fruitList .= $prefix . '"' . $fruit . '"';
    $prefix = ', ';
}

Also, if you just do it the "normal" way of appending a comma after each item (like it sounds you were doing before), and you need to trim the last one off, just do $list = rtrim($list, ', '). I see a lot of people unnecessarily mucking around with substr in this situation.

Solution 2:

This is how I've been doing it:

$arr = array(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9);

$string = rtrim(implode(',', $arr), ',');

echo $string;

Output:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

Live Demo: http://ideone.com/EWK1XR

EDIT: Per @joseantgv's comment, you should be able to remove rtrim() from the above example. I.e:

$string = implode(',', $arr);

Solution 3:

Result with and in the end:

$titleString = array('apple', 'banana', 'pear', 'grape');
$totalTitles = count($titleString);
if ($totalTitles>1) {
    $titleString = implode(', ', array_slice($titleString, 0, $totalTitles-1)) . ' and ' . end($titleString);
} else {
    $titleString = implode(', ', $titleString);
}

echo $titleString; // apple, banana, pear and grape

Solution 4:

Similar to Lloyd's answer, but works with any size array.

$missing = array();
$missing[] = 'name';
$missing[] = 'zipcode';
$missing[] = 'phone';

if( is_array($missing) && count($missing) > 0 )
        {
            $result = '';
            $total = count($missing) - 1;
            for($i = 0; $i <= $total; $i++)
            { 
              if($i == $total && $total > 0)
                   $result .= "and ";

              $result .= $missing[$i];

              if($i < $total)
                $result .= ", ";
            }

            echo 'You need to provide your '.$result.'.';
            // Echos "You need to provide your name, zipcode, and phone."
        }