Question

Must be simple but cant find my answer.
How to test whether one of the values in the array is contained in the string?
Output should be true or false.

$array = Array( 
   0 => 'word1',
   1 => 'word2',
   2 => 'New York'
   3 => 'New car' 
);

$string = "Its a sunny day in New York";

Trying to clarify. In this case array[3] should not be a match. Only array[2] should be.

Answer 1

Update:

A word boundary independent solution would be to add spaces around the input string and the search words:

$str = ' ' . $str . ' ';


function quote($a) {
    return ' ' . preg_quote($a, '/') . ' ';
}

$word_pattern = '/' . implode('|', array_map('quote', $array)) . '/';

if(preg_match($word_pattern, $str) > 0) {

}

or by looping over the terms:

foreach($array as $term) {
    if (strpos($str, ' '. $term . ' ') !== false) {
        // word contained
    }
}

Both can be put in a function to simplify the use, e.g.

function contains($needle, $haystack) {
    $haystack = ' ' . $haystack . ' ';
    foreach($needle as $term) {
       if(strpos($haystack, ' ' . $term . ' ') !== false) {
           return true;
       }
    }
    return false;
}

Have a look at a DEMO

---

Old answer:

You could use regular expressions:

function quote($a) {
    return preg_quote($a, '/');
}

$word_pattern = implode('|', array_map('quote', $array));

if(preg_match('/\b' . $word_pattern  . '\b/', $str) > 0) {

}

The important part are the boundary characters \b here. You will only get a match if the value you search for is a (sequence of) word(s) in the string.