PHP strpos with special characters

Question

i try to check a string with strpos().

$a = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

This works just fine

if (strpos($a, 'en' ) == true)

But this doesn't

if (strpos($a, '/en/' ) == true) - Doesn't work

I tried a lot of things to escape the character or format the string but as it seems I am too stupid...

It contains the string of a homepage after "http://www.tld.de/" — Lukas Hwm, Jan 25 '18 at 14:20
_It contains the string of a homepage after.._ I know that! But what is in YOUR `$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']` ? — B001ᛦ, Jan 25 '18 at 14:21
/en/ for example. I want to check which language is set at the viewed site — Lukas Hwm, Jan 25 '18 at 14:22
"how it doesn't work ? if statement not passing ?" if i check for "en" it delivers true. If I check for "/en/" it delivers false. — Lukas Hwm, Jan 25 '18 at 14:24
`strpos() == true` does not make sense since it returns an **index**: see http://php.net/manual/en/function.strpos.php; you could use `!== FALSE` instead — fantaghirocco, Jan 25 '18 at 14:27

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 25 '18 at 14:25

5

The issue is that strpos returns the position or FALSE if not found.

So if the url is /en/something/some then you are hitting the situation where en is a position 1 and any non-zero number is true

When you do /en/ then the starting position is 0 and that is false.

you need to check with === in the end or more accurately !== example

<?php

$a= "/en/blo";

if (strpos($a, '/en/' ) !== false){
    echo "TRUE";
} else {
    echo "FALSE";
}

answered Jan 25 '18 at 14:25

nerdlyist

1

That's it. Working perfectly. Can't tell you how thankful I am for your solution as also for the explanation. – Lukas Hwm Jan 25 '18 at 14:34
How about url like this `/jp/home/en/content`, it will TRUE also.. – Mochamad Arifin Jan 25 '18 at 14:53
@MochamadArifin yeah he is just looking for `\en\` as far as I can tell. The only issue is when it is at the beginning cause 0 = false. If you want to check the first 4 are `/en/` I would just substr and verify or just straight up make sure strpos for `/en/` is 0. – nerdlyist Jan 25 '18 at 17:36
@LukasHwm glad to help. Not sure if you can but accepting the answer is always appreciated! – nerdlyist Jan 25 '18 at 17:37

1 Answers1