private function parseStringToArray($string)
    {
        // convert commas to spaces
        $string = str_replace(',', ' ', $string);
        // convert new lines to spaces
        $string = str_replace(PHP_EOL, ' ', $string);
        // split on the spaces and filter out empty elements
        return array_values(
            array_filter(
                array_map(
                    'trim',
                    explode(' ', $string)
                ),
                'strlen'
            )
        );
    }