[PHP] Check if string is in Array

[Markshall]

In this small tutorial I am going to teach you how to check if a string is in an array.

In this example, I am going to use names of people, so to define these, we need to make a new array:

$names = array( 'Mark', 'Eminem', 'God' );

Okay, so we have defined the names that we want to have available in the $names variable.

Now, we are going to get the name that is set in the URL Bar.

$name = strip_tags( $_GET[ 'name' ] );

The code above will _GET the data that is set in the 'name' parameter in the URL Bar, for example:

[URL]http://www.site.com/array-script.php?[/URL]name=Mark

Now this is the part where we check if the '$name' variable is in the '$names' array.

if( in_array( $name, $names ) )
{
    echo $name . ' is in the array!'; //the $name variable has been found in $names
}
else
{
    echo $name . ' is not in the array!'; //the $name variable has NOT been found in $names
}

Now it is time to piece the full code together:

<?php
$names = array( 'Mark', 'Eminem', 'God' );
$name = strip_tags( $_GET[ 'name' ] );
if( in_array( $name, $names ) ) //make sure the variable goes before the actual array ($name, $names) instead of ($names, $name)
{
    echo $name . ' is in the array!'; //the $name variable has been found in $names
}
else
{
    echo $name . ' is not in the array!'; //the $name variable has NOT been found in $names
}
?>

This isn't the most detailed tutorial, but atleast it gets to the point.

Anyway, I hope this helped you.

 

[Kryptos]

Nice tutorial!
But, I don't think I get the point of doing this. What I do is this:

$newsID = strip_tags($_GET['newsid']);
if($newsID) { // news.php?id=1337
echo the news title and post that corresponds to the ID
} else {  // news.php
echo the latest news
}

What I mean is, why would you want to check if it is one of this names?

EDIT: Lol, sorry. I actually wrote that code here,not copying and pasting. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

 

[Markshall]

I'm just using names as an example.
You can use arrays for anything, this is just explaining how to use them.

Also, in the code you have, it should be:

strip_tags

not

strip-tags

;-)