Passing Arrays Through Forms

Hello Everyone, I've attempted this many times, but have failed to understand it each time. I want to make it easier for myself to deal with passing variables through a form. So I thought, why not use a single array variable to do that. If I do such a thing, what steps do I need to take to ensure that the values in the array are intact just as the user entered it? How do I serialize array data from an initial form? Here's a simple example of what I might have: <form method="post" action="some_page.php"> <input type="text" name="form_vars['firstname']"></input> <input type="text" name="form_vars['lastname']"></input> <input type="text" name="form_vars['address']"></input> <input type="text" name="form_vars['city']"></input> <input type="text" name="form_vars['state']"></input> <input type="text" name="form_vars['zip']"></input> </form> Now, how do I ensure that the values in the associated array, that will be sent over to some_page.php, are the values entered by the user? How do I serialize this array from this form? Or if I cannot do that, what other steps do I need to take to ensure the preservation of the values passed to another page as an array?