in_array() and multidimensional array

Question

I use in_array() to check whether a value exists in an array like below,

$a = array(\"Mac\", \"NT\", \"Irix\", \"Linux\");
if (in_array(\"Irix\"         


        

Answer 1

I was looking for a function that would let me search for both strings and arrays (as needle) in the array (haystack), so I added to the answer by @jwueller.

Here's my code:

/**
 * Recursive in_array function
 * Searches recursively for needle in an array (haystack).
 * Works with both strings and arrays as needle.
 * Both needle's and haystack's keys are ignored, only values are compared.
 * Note: if needle is an array, all values in needle have to be found for it to
 * return true. If one value is not found, false is returned.
 * @param  mixed   $needle   The array or string to be found
 * @param  array   $haystack The array to be searched in
 * @param  boolean $strict   Use strict value & type validation (===) or just value
 * @return boolean           True if in array, false if not.
 */
function in_array_r($needle, $haystack, $strict = false) {
     // array wrapper
    if (is_array($needle)) {
        foreach ($needle as $value) {
            if (in_array_r($value, $haystack, $strict) == false) {
                // an array value was not found, stop search, return false
                return false;
            }
        }
        // if the code reaches this point, all values in array have been found
        return true;
    }

    // string handling
    foreach ($haystack as $item) {
        if (($strict ? $item === $needle : $item == $needle)
            || (is_array($item) && in_array_r($needle, $item, $strict))) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

Answer 2

$userdb = Array
(
    (0) => Array
        (
            ('uid') => '100',
            ('name') => 'Sandra Shush',
            ('url') => 'urlof100'
        ),

    (1) => Array
        (
            ('uid') => '5465',
            ('name') => 'Stefanie Mcmohn',
            ('url') => 'urlof5465'
        ),

    (2) => Array
        (
            ('uid') => '40489',
            ('name') => 'Michael',
            ('url') => 'urlof40489'
        )
);

$url_in_array = in_array('urlof5465', array_column($userdb, 'url'));

if($url_in_array) {
    echo 'value is in multidim array';
}
else {
    echo 'value is not in multidim array';
}

Answer 3

The accepted solution (at the time of writing) by jwueller

function in_array_r($needle, $haystack, $strict = false) {
    foreach ($haystack as $item) {
        if (($strict ? $item === $needle : $item == $needle) || (is_array($item) && in_array_r($needle, $item, $strict))) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

Is perfectly correct but may have unintended behaviuor when doing weak comparison (the parameter $strict = false).

Due to PHP's type juggling when comparing values of different type both

"example" == 0

and

0 == "example"

Evaluates true because "example" is casted to int and turned into 0.

(See Why does PHP consider 0 to be equal to a string?)

If this is not the desired behaviuor it can be convenient to cast numeric values to string before doing a non-strict comparison:

function in_array_r($needle, $haystack, $strict = false) {
    foreach ($haystack as $item) {

        if( ! $strict && is_string( $needle ) && ( is_float( $item ) || is_int( $item ) ) ) {
            $item = (string)$item;
        }

        if (($strict ? $item === $needle : $item == $needle) || (is_array($item) && in_array_r($needle, $item, $strict))) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

Answer 4

Here is my proposition based on json_encode() solution with :

• case insensitive option
• returning the count instead of true
• anywhere in arrays (keys and values)

If word not found, it still returns 0 equal to false.

function in_array_count($needle, $haystack, $caseSensitive = true) {
    if(!$caseSensitive) {
        return substr_count(strtoupper(json_encode($haystack)), strtoupper($needle));
    }
    return substr_count(json_encode($haystack), $needle);
}

Hope it helps.

Answer 5

you can use like this

$result = array_intersect($array1, $array2);
print_r($result);

http://php.net/manual/tr/function.array-intersect.php

Answer 6

You could always serialize your multi-dimensional array and do a strpos:

$arr = array(array("Mac", "NT"), array("Irix", "Linux"));

$in_arr = (bool)strpos(serialize($arr),'s:4:"Irix";');

if($in_arr){
    echo "Got Irix!";
}

Various docs for things I used:

• strpos()
• serialize()
• Type Juggling or (bool)