WordPress PHP htmlspecialchars(get_field… cannot read arrays?

Question

I am working on a WordPress Website/Blog with two main functions.

1. Create reports.
2. Compile final report.

People can write reports, selecting the fields they need and publish it. Then at the end of the day, they can "compile" a final report from all of the reports (it concatenate the fields of all reports).

The theme is twentyten (in case it might be useful).

In my function.php file, I concatenate everthing for the final report using a foreach and lines like that:

$Urgences_Environnementales .= htmlspecialchars("<br/>".get_field('Urgences_Environnementales', $idnumber->ID));
$avezvous_regardé_des_indices_de_temps_violent_aujourdhui .= htmlspecialchars(get_field('avezvous_regardé_des_indices_de_temps_violent_aujourdhui', $idnumber->ID));
$quelle_est_cette_raison .= htmlspecialchars(get_field('quelle_est_cette_raison', $idnumber->ID));

One line per field, all the same way. After the loop is done, I update the fields:

update_field('Urgences_Environnementales',preg_replace('/(<br[\s]?[\/]?>[\s]*){2,}/', '<br/><br/>', htmlspecialchars_decode($Urgences_Environnementales)), $identificationRapport);
update_field('avezvous_regardé_des_indices_de_temps_violent_aujourdhui',preg_replace('/(<br[\s]?[\/]?>[\s]*){2,}/', '<br/><br/>', htmlspecialchars_decode($avezvous_regardé_des_indices_de_temps_violent_aujourdhui)), $identificationRapport);
update_field('quelle_est_cette_raison',preg_replace('/(<br[\s]?[\/]?>[\s]*){2,}/', '<br/><br/>', htmlspecialchars_decode($quelle_est_cette_raison)), $identificationRapport);

Then it's printed for the final report like this (this is a single field):

if(strip_tags(html_entity_decode(get_field('Urgences_Environnementales')))!=''){
   simplebox(strip_tags(html_entity_decode(get_field('Urgences_Environnementales')))!='', get_field('Urgences_Environnementales'));
}

And for those fields it works perfectly.

My problem is that all my fields composed of arrays (checkboxes that people can select multiple choices using the ACF plugin) are empty in my databse... They appear perfectly in the single reports, but they appear blank in the final report.

As an exemple, this is what I see in my database for a single report for one of my arrays:

a:4:{i:0;s:49:"L’indice d’intensité d’orage violent (STI)";i:1;s:35:"L’indice d’orage violent (TMPV)";i:2;s:34:"Potential Severe Storm Environment";i:3;s:6:"Autres";}

The corresponding field in my final report is empty.

Would someone have an idea on how to read those arrays and record them correctly in my databse? Could I transform them in strings in my foreach loop? Should I do something differently?

If you need more code don't hesitate to ask. I didn't put all my 3 functions ( functions.php , report.php , finalreport.php ) that I have in my WordPress theme as it would take tons of lines and I'm pretty sure the most important ones are right here. If I'm wrong, I could post the functions.

I searched and searched, but I can't seem to find the answer by myself, so I'm searching for help here.

PS: This is my 1st post, if you have any reccomandations, you can send them to me and I will change my post.

Thank you very much for your help!

PPS: I'm sorry for my english, I'm french, from Montreal, Qc, Canada.

Answer 1

Advanced Custom Fields stores some values as serialized arrays (checkboxes, repeaters, etc). Your code is assuming that you will be getting a string back. As you suggested in your answer, the easiest way to account for this in your current code would be to use the is_array() method to check the type of the returned value, and then another inner loop to handle the summary. This code assumes you just want to concatenate all the values, you could just as easily use another array to make sure they are unique, etc.

// get the value from acf
$value = get_field( 'Urgences_Environnementales', $idnumber->ID );
// if it's already an array, use that, if not make it into an array with a single element
$value_arr = ( is_array( $value ) )? $value : array( $value );
$text = ""; // reset since this is in a loop
// concatenate each checkbox value
foreach ( $value_arr as $val ){
    $text .= $val . ', ';
}
// append it to the main summary
$Urgences_Environnementales .= htmlspecialchars( "<br/>". $text );