SQL Arrays are returned as strings in PHP
Using PHP with SQL Arrays

I would highly suggest never using PHP. However, when you can't avoid it you may find this post useful on reading PostgreSQL arrays as PHP Arrays. People have been complaining about this for 15 years now. PHP doesn't migrate SQL arrays into native PHP array structures.

Getting around the problem with JSON

The new method of working around PHP's long-standing inadequacies is to use JSON to move the array.

SELECT array_to_json(pg_array_result) AS new_name FROM tbl1;
$array = json_decode($returned_field);


Attribution: shamefully stolen from michaelbn's answer on StackExchange..

Getting around the problem with unnest

You have another option to use unnest and return a result set which PHP can handle.

SELECT * FROM unnest(ARRAY[1,2,3]) AS t(x);
 x 
---
 1
 2
 3
(3 rows)