Using categories in my php variable?

Question

How do I get the if statement below, to return TRUE and therefore return my string "Africa is in this array"? Note: template is set to parse on INPUT (I cant use output for this template)

 <?php 
    $entryregion="{categories show_group='4' backspace='2'}{category_name}, {/categories}";
    $entryregionArr=(explode(',',$entryregion));
    print_r($entryregionArr);
    echo "<br />" ;
    if (in_array('Africa', $entryregionArr)) {
        echo "Africa is in this array";

    }
    ?>

the above print_r($entryregionArr); prints an array that looks like this. Array ( [0] => Africa [1] => South Africa [1] => Durban [1] => ) I think I want it to look more like this Array ( [0] => Africa [1] => South Africa [2] => Durban ) where Durban is in the 2nd key and the last key id deleted, but I am not sure why or how to do this. I have tried parse='inward' in the category tag. I had a recent suggestion through this site to use the explode() function and I am grateful because it has shown me that this is where my error is. Well, one step at a time. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

It's my personal advice not to mix up the EE tags with PHP code. There may cause issue because of "PHP Parsing Stage" sometime.

In your case, you can use PHP code like:

EDITED:

$this->EE =& get_instance();
    $res = $this->EE->db->select('cat_name')->where('group_id', 4)->get('categories')->result_array();
    foreach ($res as $r)
    {
        $entryregionArr[] = $r['cat_name'];
    }

    if (in_array('Africa', $entryregionArr)) {
        echo "Africa is in this array";
    }

I hope, it would help you.