Why isn't php explode extracting array values

Question

I have some date values (each with a trailing = sign) stored as a &-delimited string.

My $_POST['dates'] string looks like this:

23.08.18=&22.08.18=&21.08.18=

I'm trying the following PHP code to extract the dates before inserting them into my database table. The code is currently not working.

foreach(explode('&', $_POST['dates']) as $value)  
{
    $value1 = explode('=', $value);
    foreach ($value1 as $x) {
    }
}

How can I isolate the date values?

Answer 1

<?php

$data = '23.08.18=&22.08.18=&21.08.18=';

//$delimiters has to be array
//$string has to be array

function multiexplode ($delimiters,$string) {

 $ary = explode($delimiters[0],$string);
 array_shift($delimiters);
 if($delimiters != NULL) {
    foreach($ary as $key => $val) {
        $ary[$key] = multiexplode($delimiters, $val);
    }
 }
 return  $ary;
}

$exploded = multiexplode(array("=","&"),$data);

var_dump($exploded);

The result should be:

array (size=3)
  0 => string '23.08.18' (length=8)
  2 => string '22.08.18' (length=8)
  4 => string '21.08.18' (length=8)

We need to use array_filter.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php

[EDIT] mickmackusa's answer is the right tool for parse url parameters into variables.