How to validate and sanitize array of data in php?

Question

I want to validate and sanitize data which comes from POST array.

My POST data is something like this:

Array
(
    [category_name] => fsdfsfwereq34
    [subCategory] => Array
        (
            [0] => sdfadsffasfasdf
            [1] => sdfasfdsafadsf
            [2] => safdfdasfas
        )

    [category-submitted] => TRUE
)
1

I can validate and sanitize category_name and this is how I do it in PHP.

if (!empty( $_POST['category_name'])) { 
    $category = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'category_name', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);  
} else {
    $category = NULL;
}

But I do not know how to do it for values of the subCategory array. Can anybody tell me how can I do this?

Hope somebody may help me out. Thank you.

Answer 1

You can use foreach to loop through all values of an array. In the loop you can push your filtered values to a new array $subCategory (e.g.).

E.g.:

$subCategory = $_POST['subCategory'];
$subcategories = array();
if (!empty( $subCategory ) && is_array( $subCategory ) ) {
  foreach( $subCategory as $key => $value ) {
    $subCategories[] = filter_var( $value, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING )
  }
}