How can I convert a list of title-posts into a sequence of comma separated text? [closed]

Question

In Wordpress, I am working on a theme for a custom post type (books) in which I am calling a list of authors that come from another custom post type (people). They are linked through the wordpress plugin Posts 2 Posts.

My Aim is to create a sequence of authors separated by comma, like this: Author1, Author2, Author3, Author4.

With the code below, the result is a sequence of authors like this : Author1Author2Author3Author4. The same code also works to get a list of elements by adding a li division below the_post();, with this results :
-Author1
-Author2
-Author3
-Author4

The piece of code :

if ($autores->have_posts()): 
                
                echo '<li>';
                    echo '<b>Autores: </b>';
                        while ( $autores->have_posts() ) : $autores->the_post();
                                echo '<a href="';
                                echo the_permalink();
                                echo '">';
                                echo the_title();
                                echo '</a>';
                        endwhile; 
                    echo '</li>'; 
                    endif; 

Maybe this question can be answered in multiple forms. One is by converting this object into an array of elements (I don't know how...yet?). At least, I found a very useful method which works with taxonomy elements (here: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/238362), but this is not working in my case, maybe because I have one object, so when I make a count($autores) I always have 1 as result. I also wonder if it is possible to use css to convert a list of elements into inline elements and separate them with commas.

I will really appreciate if someone here can give me an idea to resolve this question. Keep searching by my side...

Answer 1

If you want to keep them all within one outer <li>, you can use something like this. Instead of echoing them immediately, save them to an array, then loop through the array.

<?php
if ($autores->have_posts()):
    echo '<li>';
        // create an empty array
        $autoresArray = array();
        while($autores->have_posts()): $autores->the_post();
            // save the link and name
            $autoreLink = get_permalink();
            $autoreName = get_the_title();
            // now add them to a multidimensional array
            $autoresArray[] = array(
                'link' => $autoreLink,
                'name' => $autoreName,
            );
        endwhile;
        // outside of 'while' so we only display the author list once
        for($i=0; $i<count($autoresArray); $i++) {
            // display the linked name
            echo '<a href="' . $autoresArray[$i]['link'] . '">' . $autoresArray[$i]['name'] . '</a>';
            // if it's not the last name in the array, add comma and space
            if($i != (count($autoresArray)-1)) {
                echo ', ';
            }
        }
    echo '</li>';
endif;
?>