Question

I’m trying to find a string inside of another string (I tried using strpos, but did not get any results back) using PHP. Here’s what I’ve tried:

$assignedBuildings = " , building 1, building 2, building 3";
$buildingName = "building 1";
$assArray = array_map('trim', explode(',', $assignedBuildings));
print_r($assArray);
echo("Looking for: " . $buildingName . " in " . $assignedBuildings);
$pos = in_array($buildingName, $assArray);

the print_r gets me this:

Array
(
    [0] => 
    [1] => Test Chapter
    [2] => Test 2 Chapter
    [3] => Test 3 Chapter
)

and when I echo $pos, I get nothing (as in “”).

Let’s pretend $buildingName is “Test 3 Chapter”. How would I find it in $assArray?

Answer 1

If the list of assigned buildings is a comma separated list, I’d suggest exploding it, then checking for your value in the resultant array. So, something like this:

$assignedbuildings = explode(",",",building 1,building 2,building 3");
$buildingToLookFor = "building 1";
$buildingfound = in_array($buildingtolookfor,$assignedbuildings);

Things to note:

1. You need to make sure that there are no spaces around the items in your list that are not also in your search string
2. If you want the search to be case-insensitive, add strtolower around both the strings.
3. Using the strpos function is problematic because it doesn’t separate individual entries. So, if your list contains “Building 10”, strpos will return a value for both “Building 10” and “Building 1”.