array_find() - A case insensitive array_search() with partial matches

gistfile1.php

<?php
/**
 * Case in-sensitive array_search() with partial matches
 *
 * @param string $needle   The string to search for.
 * @param array  $haystack The array to search in.
 *
 * @author Bran van der Meer <branmovic@gmail.com>
 * @since 29-01-2010
 */
function array_find($needle, array $haystack)
{
    foreach ($haystack as $key => $value) {
        if (false !== stripos($value, $needle)) {
            return $key;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

For people who need this for both multidimensional and normal arrays, i have adapted it.

function array_find($needle, array $haystack, $column = null) {
    
    if(is_array($haystack[0]) === true) { // check for multidimentional array

        foreach (array_column($haystack, $column) as $key => $value) {
            if (strpos(strtolower($value), strtolower($needle)) !== false) {
                return $key;
            }
        }

    } else {
        foreach ($haystack as $key => $value) { // for normal array
            if (strpos(strtolower($value), strtolower($needle)) !== false) {
                return $key;
            }
        }
    }
    return false;
}

Here's an example:

$multiArray = array(
     0 => array(
              'name' => 'kevin',
              'hobbies' => 'Football / Cricket'),
      1 => array(
              'name' => 'tom',
              'hobbies' => 'tennis'),
       2 => array(
              'name' => 'alex',
              'hobbies' => 'Golf, Softball')
);
$singleArray = array(
        0 => 'Tennis',
        1 => 'Cricket',
);

echo "key is - ". array_find('cricket', $singleArray); // returns - key is - 1
echo "key is - ". array_find('cricket', $multiArray, 'hobbies'); // returns - key is - 0

Hope this helps someone. You could also check to see if the $column is found more than once and if some return an array of the keys matching.

It saved me from a heart attack! Thank you so much!

If you're not afraid of a little bit of regex, preg_grep() is native PHP and will likely do this more quickly:

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-grep.php

// Looking for "first " at beginning of any array values

// Get results
$results = array_values( preg_grep( '/^first (\w+)/i', array(
    'f', 'fun', 'first', 'first match', 'not first'
) ) );

// Output
var_dump( $results );

// Results
array (size=1)
  0 => string 'first match' (length=11)

The PREG_GREP_INVERT flag even allows quickly targeting the inverse.

// Looking for inverse of "first " at beginning of any array values

// Get results
$results = array_values( preg_grep( '/^first (\w+)/i', array(
    'f', 'fun', 'first', 'first match', 'not first'
), PREG_GREP_INVERT ) );

// Output
var_dump( $results );

// Results
array (size=4)
  0 => string 'f' (length=1)
  1 => string 'fun' (length=3)
  2 => string 'first' (length=5)
  3 => string 'not first' (length=9)

Note that I'm using /i above to denote case insensitivity.

Very helpful. Thanks.