Suggest efficient method to search a string in array in PHP

Question

I'm using jQuery autocomplete, following is my code

prg1_view.php

<div id="j_autocomplete">
<label>Search</label><input id="search" type="text">
</div>
$( "#search" ).autocomplete({
source: "prg1.php"      
});

prg1.php

$q = strtolower($_GET['term']);
$q = '/'.$q.'/';

$arr1 = array('a'=> 'apple','b'=> 'boy','p'=> 'pineapple');
$arr2 = array();

foreach($arr1 as $key => $value)
{
    if(preg_match($q, $value))
    array_push($arr2, $value);
}

echo json_encode($arr2);

When I'm trying to search for apple,both apple and pineapple are poping up,expected result is I'm getting but is there any other better approach is have to implement this ?

Marc B · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-11 05:03:10Z

4

For that kind of incredibly basic string matching, you're better off with a simple

if (strpos($q, $value) !== FALSE) {
   array_push(...);
}

and save yourself the regex overhead. And of course, if you only need an exact match against the array's contents and not substrings, there's better ways yet, such as in_array().

if you insist on regexes, then use preg_grep instead, which does what you're doing without the loop:

$matches = preg_grep('/'. preg_quote($_GET['term']) . '/', $arr1);
echo json_encode($matches);

answered Jan 11, 2013 at 5:03

Marc B

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