Question

I am trying to use jQuery Autocomplete Plugin in my PHP web application.
I have a JSON file on the server that has the data for the search. It looks like this:

{
    "_E161": {
        "keggId":"rn:R05223",
        "abbrev":"ADOCBLS",
        "name":"Adenosylcobalamin 5'-phosphate synthase",
        "equation":"agdpcbi[c] + rdmbzi[c]  -> h[c] + adocbl[c] + gmp[c] ",
    },
    "_E163": {
         ....
    }
}

I would like to go through this JSON file (has 3500 entries) with PHP script that gets search term from the jQuery autocomplete plugin. Then return the entries that contain search term back to client side to populate autocomplete.
What would be a better way to implement this? My first guess is to loop through the JSON file and use strpos() But I suspect that might be slow?

Answer 1

You can make use on preg_grep (Return array entries that match the pattern),

// sanitize, and perform some processing to ensure is a valid regex pattern
$pattern = ...;

$json = json_decode( ... );
$arr  = array();
foreach ($json as $key=>$arr)
{
  $arr[$key] = $arr['name'];
}
$matches = preg_grep("/$pattern/i", $arr);
// $matches will hold the matches
// and you refer back to the $json using associate key