Parse a delimited string containing key-value pairs resembling PHP's array-syntax into an associative array

I want to create an array from this string, stored in database:

$string = '"2148" => "50","2050" => "2","2403" => "1"';
$id_values = explode('=> "', $string);
foreach($id_values as $id => $value)
{
    $value_to_print .= '<img src="images/item_values/'.$id.'.gif"> - '.$value.'';
}

echo $value_to_print;

Manually defining the array works as expected:

$id_values = array("2148" => "50","2050" => "2","2403" => "1");

$id isn't going to be the number from the original string - it will create a new one.

You could try this:

$string = '"2148" => "50","2050" => "2","2403" => "1"';
$id_values = array();
$bits = explode(",", $string);
foreach ($bits as $b) {
    $bobs = explode(" => ", $b);
    $id_values[$bobs[0]] = $bobs[1];
}
foreach($id_values as $id => $value){
    $value_to_print .= '<img src="images/item_values/'.$id.'.gif"> - '.$value.'';
}

That's untested but it should be fine.

In the future, use json_encode and json_decode to store and retrieve arrays.

Note: You probably want to get rid of the quotes too - just add

$b = str_replace('"', '', $b);

on the line before $bobs = explode(" => ", $b);