Finding the key of an array based on string match in PHP?

Question

Let's say I have an array that looks like this:

$array[0] = 'House';
$array[1] = 'Condo';
$array[2] = 'Townhouse';
$array[3] = 'Land';

If I passed a var which contains either "condo" or "Condo" (in other words, case-insensitive), I want to return 1, indicating that $array[1] matches "condo" or "Condo" or "CONDO".

So basically I want:

$search = 'Condo';
$key = get_property_key($search, $array);
// $key should return 1

Is there a quick PHP method to do this? Or do I need to write my own function to loop through? If it's the latter, you don't need to write out the function for me - I can handle it myself. But I'm hoping there's a PHP function that I missed during my "education" period (although this education period NEVER ends).

php.net/manual/en/function.array-search.php

Cfreak
– Cfreak

2012-01-13 21:02:43 +00:00
Commented Jan 13, 2012 at 21:02 — Cfreak
– Cfreak, Commented Jan 13, 2012 at 21:02

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 20:38:18Z

8

There's no built-in for case-insensitive search, but this works, based on plain old array_search()

 array_search(strtolower($search),array_map('strtolower',$array));

edited Nov 17, 2023 at 20:38

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Jan 13, 2012 at 20:59

Michael Berkowski

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Comments

gen_Eric · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-13 21:01:02Z

3

You can use array_search, though that's case sensitive. For an non-case sensitive array_search, you could do something like this:

function get_property_key($needle, $haystack){
    return array_search(strtolower($needle), array_map('strtolower', $haystack));
}

answered Jan 13, 2012 at 21:01

gen_Eric

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1 Comment

jeffkee Over a year ago

Yup Michael beat you by a minute.. same thing really. Gave you +1 anyway thanks so much, you guys rock.

Stevanicus · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-13 21:17:02Z

0

What about something like this

    foreach($array as $i){
        if(strtolower($i) == strtolower($query)){
            //do something
            return;
        }
    }

answered Jan 13, 2012 at 21:17

Stevanicus

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3 Comments

jeffkee Over a year ago

That would search the value, not the key. If you had $a=>$i in the foreach line this may work. However the above solutions with array_key() function was the more elegant & simpler solution.

Stevanicus Over a year ago

@jeffkee but arent you searching for the value.. i.e. Condo.. and not the key?

jeffkee Over a year ago

No, as the question clearly states, I need the $key: "$key should return 1"

atxdba · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-13 21:00:35Z

-1

There's no built in function; you'd have to roll your own. I'm not sure if this will suit your needs but on approach about be to index the array with the lower cased version and then look for $array[strtolower($search))]

answered Jan 13, 2012 at 21:00

atxdba

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1 Comment

jeffkee Over a year ago

apparently array_search() is a function.

capi · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-14 00:09:01Z

-1

Why not populate the array with key names for the value you are searching, normalized so it's always lowercase :

$array['condo'] = true;
$array['land']  = true;
//and so on

//and then the search becomes really fast
if (isset($array[strtolower($search)])) {
  //element found
}

answered Jan 14, 2012 at 0:09

capi

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