Question

I am trying to create a script that checks if a certain value is in a comma delimited string, and if the value is present, it should return true else it should return false.

Basically, I am trying to check if a user has voted for a specific person before, and if so, they cannot vote again, if they have not, vote and then add their uid to the database.

I am using explode to get all the values into an array, but I am unsure about the checking function, I have a few ideas but this is quite an important script so I wanted to see if there is a better way of going about it.

$test = "john,jack,tom";

$exploded = explode(",",$test);

$hostID = "john";

foreach($exploded as $one){
    if($one == $hostID){
        $return = TRUE;
    }else{
        $return = FALSE;
    };
};

Thanx in advance!

Answer 1

• You could use in_array.
• Some people prefer to use lowercase true and false.
• The semicolon after } is not needed
• $return = TRUE does not actually stop the function. Maybe you do return $return.
• Some people like to put spaces after comma’s and keywords (e.g. foreach, if, else)
• Some people prefer single quotes over double quotes

Code:

function find_name($name, $list)
{
    $exploded = explode(',', $list);
    return in_array($name, $exploded);
}

var_dump(find_name('john', 'john,jack,tom'));
?>