PHP search multidimensional array for substring

Question

I'm trying to search for a substring within part of the bottom layer of a 2-layer array and return the key from the top layer. E.g. in the array below searching within "A" for "ca" would return "0" and "2" (but would miss "cattle"):

Array (
    [0] => Array (
        [A] => cat
        [B] => horses
        )
    [1] => Array (
        [A] => dog
        [B] => cattle
    )
    [2] => Array (
        [A] => cat
        [B] => sheep
    )
)

Two ways: first, loop throw all elements in the layer 1 array then test values in layer 2 element, or transform the array into a only one dimensional array. — FIG-GHD742
– FIG-GHD742, Commented Sep 19, 2012 at 19:52
@Eric - My current method works (for a very limited number of applications) but is inflexible and over-elaborate. I won't bore you with the full details but it involves generating an array of possible strings (it uses in_array so won't work for substrings) and searching for those. I don't want to have to generate this further array. — user1684046
– user1684046, Commented Sep 19, 2012 at 20:10
@FIG-GHD742 - Thanks but could you give an example of the first approach? I've been using foreach loops and in_array but it's searching for a substring that I can't get working — user1684046
– user1684046, Commented Sep 19, 2012 at 20:12

Alain · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-19 20:04:29Z

2

You can try like this :

$array = array(
    array(
        "A" => "cat",
        "B" => "horse"
    ),
    array(
        "A" => "dog",
        "B" => "cattle"
    ),
    array(
        "A" => "cat",
        "B" => "sheep"
    ),
);

$result = mySearch($array, "A", "ca");

function mySearch($array, $key, $search)
{
    $results = array();
    foreach ($array as $rootKey => $data) {
        if (array_key_exists($key, $data)) {
            if (strncmp($search, substr($data[$key], 0, 2), strlen($search)) == 0) {
                $results[] = $rootKey;
            }
        }
    }
    return $results;
}

var_dump($result);

Will output :

array(2) {
  [0]=>
  int(0)
  [1]=>
  int(2)
}

Note that this method is not encoding safe (you may use mb_str* instead of str* function family, more details here).

answered Sep 19, 2012 at 20:04

Alain

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1 Comment

FIG-GHD742 Over a year ago

@user1684046 This is a good way how my first approach will loop, as you can see, wee use a foreach loop for loop throw all item in the first dimensional array. Then test each childen for select data.

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