Check a string to see if it contains an array, if so output the value from the array into a new variable

Question

I'm fairly new to PHP and struggling to understand the best way to do this. I have an array:

$colours= array('Yellow', 'Red', 'Blue');

I now need to check a string against this array and if one of the colors exists in the string we then need to output the result into a new variable. Here's a sample string:

$string= "Black & Aztec Blue";

So in this case the desired output would be "Blue". Or, as suggested below both values could be saved in a second array? Has anyone done something like this before?

All help appreciated.

You could explode on spaces then iterate through each value. If you had two found values would you want both or just the first one? — chris85
– chris85, Commented Oct 6, 2015 at 15:57
@chris85 great idea, but some of the strings may contain nospaces or slashes instead of spaces etc... Very messy data! eg. "Red/Tarmac Black" ideally this would be Red as Black is a secondary colour. I guess both would be good. Perhaps as another array? — ABOO
– ABOO, Commented Oct 6, 2015 at 15:59
Oh, yea @MarcB's idea is better. Iterate through your colors and use strpos on the string for matches. — chris85
– chris85, Commented Oct 6, 2015 at 16:05

Barmar · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-06 16:18:13Z

2

Create a regexp that matches any of the words using alternation |.

$regexp = '/\b(' . implode('|', $colours) . ')\b/'; // $regexp = '/\b(Yellow|Red|Blue)\b/'
if (preg_match($regexp, $string, $match)) {
    $found_word = $match[0];
}

\b matches word boundaries, so this will not match if the strings are adjacent like BlackBlue. Take them out if you want to match the colours in this case.

edited Oct 6, 2015 at 16:18

answered Oct 6, 2015 at 16:12

Barmar

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8 Comments

FirstOne Over a year ago

Will this find if two words are connected like BlackBlue Red?

Barmar Over a year ago

No. The \b operator only matches at word boundaries.

ABOO Over a year ago

Thanks for this @Barmar. I might be able to hack this to work. Is there a way of getting it to work regardless of case? As some of the words are uppercase and mixed case.

Barmar Over a year ago

Add the i modifier to the regexp.

Barmar Over a year ago

Maybe before asking any more questions, you should brush up on the documentation of using regexp in PHP?

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