What are some best practices for handling custom fields with multiple values in PHP, especially in a WordPress environment?

When dealing with custom fields with multiple values in PHP, especially in a WordPress environment, it is important to properly handle the data to ensure consistency and avoid errors. One common approach is to store the values as an array in a single custom field. This allows for easy retrieval and manipulation of the data when needed.

// Retrieve the custom field values as an array
$custom_field_values = get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'custom_field_name', false);

// Check if the custom field values exist
if (!empty($custom_field_values)) {
    // Loop through the values and do something with each value
    foreach ($custom_field_values as $value) {
        // Do something with $value
    }
}