Search for PHP array element containing string

Question

$example = array('An example','Another example','Last example');

How can I do a loose search for the word "Last" in the above array?

echo array_search('Last example',$example);

The code above will only echo the value's key if the needle matches everything in the value exactly, which is what I don't want. I want something like this:

echo array_search('Last',$example);

And I want the value's key to echo if the value contains the word "Last".

Answer 1

To find values that match your search criteria, you can use array_filter function:

$example = array('An example','Another example','Last example');
$searchword = 'last';
$matches = array_filter($example, function($var) use ($searchword) { return preg_match("/\b$searchword\b/i", $var); });

Now $matches array will contain only elements from your original array that contain word last (case-insensitive).

If you need to find keys of the values that match the criteria, then you need to loop over the array:

$example = array('An example','Another example','One Example','Last example');
$searchword = 'last';
$matches = array();
foreach($example as $k=>$v) {
    if(preg_match("/\b$searchword\b/i", $v)) {
        $matches[$k] = $v;
    }
}

Now array $matches contains key-value pairs from the original array where values contain (case- insensitive) word last.

Answer 2

function customSearch($keyword, $arrayToSearch){
    foreach($arrayToSearch as $key => $arrayItem){
        if( stristr( $arrayItem, $keyword ) ){
            return $key;
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

$input= array('An example','Another example','Last example');
$needle = 'Last';
$ret = array_keys(array_filter($input, function($var) use ($needle){
    return strpos($var, $needle) !== false;
}));

This will give you all the keys whose value contain the needle.

Answer 4

It finds an element's key with first match:

echo key(preg_grep('/\b$searchword\b/i', $example));

And if you need all keys use foreach:

foreach (preg_grep('/\b$searchword\b/i', $example) as $key => $value) {
  echo $key;
}

Answer 5

I do not like regex because as far as I know, they are always slower than a normal string function. So my solution is:

function substr_in_array($needle, array $haystack)
{
    foreach($haystack as $value)
    {
        if(strpos($value, $needle) !== FALSE) return TRUE;
    }
    return FALSE;
}

Answer 6

The answer that Aleks G has given is not accurate enough.

$example = array('An example','Another example','One Example','Last example');
$searchword = 'last';
$matches = array();
foreach($example as $k=>$v) {
    if(preg_match("/\b$searchword\b/i", $v)) {
        $matches[$k] = $v;
    }
}

The line

if(preg_match("/\b$searchword\b/i", $v)) {

should be replaced by these ones

$match_result = preg_match("/\b$searchword\b/i", $v);
if( $match_result!== false && $match_result === 1 ) {

Or more simply

if( preg_match("/\b$searchword\b/i", $v) === 1 ) {

In agreement with http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match.php

preg_match() returns 1 if the pattern matches given subject, 0 if it does not, or FALSE if an error occurred.

Answer 7

I was also looking for a solution to OP's problem and I stumbled upon this question via Google. However, none of these answers did it for me so I came up with something a little different that works well.

$arr = array("YD-100 BLACK", "YD-100 GREEN", "YD-100 RED", "YJ-100 BLACK");
//split model number from color
$model = explode(" ",$arr[0])
//find all values that match the model number
$match_values = array_filter($arr, function($val,$key) use (&$model) { return stristr($val, $model[0]);}, ARRAY_FILTER_USE_BOTH);
//returns
//[0] => YD-100 BLACK
//[1] => YD-100 GREEN
//[2] => YD-100 RED

This will only work with PHP 5.6.0 and above.