Building query string links

I'm building a filters section for my search page and I was wondering what is the best way to go about doing the query strings. My problem is that these links function a lot like checkboxes, so some, all or none can be on. I'd have to loop through each of about 30 or so link开发者_C百科s, removing or adding that specific link's value depending on its state.

My first concern is:

Should I pass the arrays like

colors=red,blue,green   //explode?

or

colors[]=red&colors[]=blue&colors[]=green   //parse_str?

What is the fastest/best way to remove a certain value of a certain array as I loop through each link? I imagine it'd be a bit more complicated using the second method I've posted above, yes?

EDIT2 - What do you think of this?

I've ran into a tutorial online and came up with this:

function remove( $filters = array(), $remove_key = NULL, $remove_val = NULL )
    {
        if( $remove_key != NULL && array_key_exists($remove_key,$filters) )
        {
            if( $remove_val != NULL && array_key_exists($remove_val,array_flip($filters[$remove_key])) )
            {
                $filters[$remove_key] = array_diff($filters[$remove_key],array($remove_val));
            } else {
                unset($filters[$remove_key]);
            }
        }
        return http_build_query( $filters );
    }

Currently, I can pass $remove_key to remove a key and $remove_val to remove a value from a key in an array.

What do you guys think? Would this be too slow for for doing 30-50 links? Thanks!

---

 colors[]=red&colors[]=blue&colors[]=green 

Would be a the Way a Form would submit the data (when method="get"). And you can access it via $_GET['colors'] which is the native and by that probably the fastest way.

EDIT: to get that string via http_build_query just fill them in the array color

$data = array('colors' => array('green','red','blue'));
echo http_build_query($data); // colors[0]=green&colors[1]=red&colors[2]=blue