Find first occurance of array value in a string

Question

I've got an array of values, all containing one word, and I'd like to be able to find which of those values is found first in a string.

$materials = array("cotton","silk","polyester","denim","wool");
$string1 = "The fabric composition of this jacket is 100% cotton (body) and 65% polyester / 35% cotton (lining)";
$string2 = "The jeans are made from denim with cotton pockets";

So for the $string1, I'd like it to say that it found 'cotton' first as the material and for the $string2 I'd like it to say that it found 'denim' first.

Do you know a way of doing this? I was originally looking at a foreach loop but it would go in order of the array meaning it would also bring 'cotton' back for both strings as that's the first one in the array:

foreach ($materials as $material) {
    if (stripos($string1, $material) !== FALSE) {
        $product_material1 = $material;
        break;
    }
}

Do you know a way of doing this? Did you tried something? If yes show us your attempt(s), so we can show you what you did wrong and where you can improve your code — Rizier123
– Rizier123, Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 15:50
split the strings into arrays using a space as a delimiter. Cross check your new array values with $materials. If they match do something. — floor
– floor, Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 15:54
What's stopping you from collecting starting indexes of elements from $materials in $string1 and $string2, then just selecting the smallest? — kooker
– kooker, Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 15:56

Mark Baker · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-06 15:56:55Z

2

$materials = array("cotton","silk","polyester","denim","wool");
$string1 = "The fabric composition of this jacket is 100% cotton (body) and 65% polyester / 35% cotton (lining)";
$string2 = "The jeans are made from denim with cotton pockets";

$firstMatch = array_shift(array_intersect(str_word_count($string1, 1), $materials));
var_dump($firstMatch);

$firstMatch = array_shift(array_intersect(str_word_count($string2, 1), $materials));
var_dump($firstMatch);

If there's no match, you'll get a null

Note that it's case-sensitive

answered Mar 6, 2015 at 15:56

Mark Baker

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1 Comment

Jo H Over a year ago

I changed it so that the $string1 was all lower case so the case sensitive bit wasn't an issue: $firstMatch = array_shift(array_intersect(str_word_count($string1, 1), $materials)); I'm going to mark this as the answer as it's done exactly what I asked for thank you!!!

jeromegamez · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-06 16:37:57Z

1

I like Mark Baker's solution because I like one liners, but here is another solution with regular expressions and a helper function.

function findFirst($haystack, $needles) {
    if (preg_match('/'.implode('|', $needles).'/', $haystack, $matches)) {
        return $matches[0];
    }

    return null;
}

$first1 = findFirst($string1, $materials);
var_dump($first1);

$first2 = findFirst($string2, $materials);
var_dump($first2);

answered Mar 6, 2015 at 16:37

jeromegamez

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