PHP Constants Containing Arrays?

Question

This failed:

 define('DEFAULT_ROLES', array('guy', 'development team'));

Apparently, constants can't hold arrays. What is the best way to get around this?

define('DEFAULT_ROLES', 'guy|development team');

//...

$default = explode('|', DEFAULT_ROLES);

This seems like unnecessary effort.

Answer 1

Since PHP 5.6, you can declare an array constant with const:

<?php
const DEFAULT_ROLES = array('guy', 'development team');

The short syntax works too, as you'd expect:

<?php
const DEFAULT_ROLES = ['guy', 'development team'];

If you have PHP 7, you can finally use define(), just as you had first tried:

<?php
define('DEFAULT_ROLES', array('guy', 'development team'));