Finding and removing duplicates within WP Arrays

Question

I'm looking to see if it's possible to find and remove duplicates from the arrays generated below. I've tried array_unique array_merge and they haven't worked.

$category = get_the_category();
$tags = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);

As an example, there is a potential that the word "Apparel" may appear in both Category and Tag for the post. With the "raw" method above, Apparel would appear twice in my output. I'm only looking to include it once. At this point in time, I believe it is ok if both lists are merged and all words are part of 1 output.

Example: %23Apparel %23Auto %23Mens

Then, once the output is generated, I need to add HTML URLEncode %23 to the beginning of each word.

Would appreciate your input.

Answer 1

If you only want to collect the category+tag names into the output, you can try this

<?php 
global $post;
$words=array();

$tags = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);
foreach($tags as $tag){
    $words[]="%23".$tag->name;
}

$cats = get_the_category($post->ID);
foreach($cats as $cat){
    $words[]="%23".$cat->name;
}

$words=array_unique($words);
echo implode(" ",$words);
?>