DaniWeb Forum Index > Web Development > PHP

Find & Insert Part of urlQuery value?

Please support our PHP advertiser: PostgreSQL or MySQL? Compare and contrast the two most popular open source databases

•

Join Date: Jul 2004

Posts: 4

Reputation: Rika is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 0

Rika

Offline

Newbie Poster

Find & Insert Part of urlQuery value?

Sep 15th, 2007

hello all,

Im trying to dynamically insert text onto a page by inserting a value from a query string using php. This was simple enough when i wanted to insert the entire value, but im having trouble finding information on how to search the value for a word (from a list of words) and if it contains one to echo/print just that word, not the entire value.

So far i have the basic 'return the whole value' scripts.
[code:php]
<?php if($_GET['KEY'] == "")
{
// no keyword entered
echo "";
}
else
{
echo $_GET['KEY']." Or Any City";
}
?>
</span>
[/code]

The value of the key contains a location eg. washington, the value could just be one word(and the above code works if it is), but its more likely to contain more words eg. ?key=washington something somethingelse

I need to find a way of searching this value against a list of locations (eg. washington, new york, la, etc.. If the value of the key contains one of the locations in the list, then i need to insert just that location into the page, not the entire value.

Im not sure how this is best done, if anyone has any ideas or knows where i can find help, it'd be much appreciated.

Thanks, Rika

•

Join Date: Aug 2005

Posts: 5,264

Reputation: iamthwee is a splendid one to behold

Solved Threads: 377

iamthwee

Offline

Posting Expert

Re: Find & Insert Part of urlQuery value?

Sep 15th, 2007

Put the key locations in an array and loop through the array?

•

Join Date: Aug 2005

Posts: 5,264

Reputation: iamthwee is a splendid one to behold

Solved Threads: 377

iamthwee

Offline

Posting Expert

Re: Find & Insert Part of urlQuery value?

Sep 15th, 2007

Maybe something?

 Help with Code Tags 
 PHP Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
<?php
 
$word_to_match = "New York";
 
$locations = array("Washington","New York","Brooklyn");
 
foreach ($locations as $c)
{
  if ( $c == $word_to_match)
  {
    echo "Word found : $c <br>";
  }
  else
    echo "Nope <br>";
}
?>
<?php

$word_to_match = "New York";

$locations = array("Washington","New York","Brooklyn");

foreach ($locations as $c)
{
  if ( $c == $word_to_match)
  {
    echo "Word found : $c <br>";
  }
  else
    echo "Nope <br>";
}
?>

You might also want to look at the function array_push which is presumably more flexible.

Btw, the above is untested and straight from my head, it may or may not work

•

Join Date: Nov 2006

Posts: 61

Reputation: Eko is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 1

Eko

Offline

Junior Poster in Training

Re: Find & Insert Part of urlQuery value?

Sep 16th, 2007

If the user input is ,for example "house Seattle job" and you wanna get the Seattle word, you can do this with explode http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php

 Help with Code Tags 
 PHP Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
php if($_GET['KEY'] == "")
{
    // no keyword entered
    echo "";
}
else
{
    $userCity=array();
    $userCity=explode(" ",$_GET['key']);
php if($_GET['KEY'] == "")
{
    // no keyword entered
    echo "";
}
else
{
    $userCity=array();
    $userCity=explode(" ",$_GET['key']);

Now you must loop through the userCity array and compare with another array or with what you used to store the city names
Here you must have a convetion.All the citynames must be in lower/uppercase in order to get a good comparison . So you must do an additional operation before using the for : $userInputCity=strtolower($_GET['key']) assuming that the names in cities array are also lowercase

 Help with Code Tags 
 PHP Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
foreach($userCity as $key1 => $inputcity)
{  
      foreach($cities as $key2 => $cityname)
      {
           if($inputcity == $cityname)
             echo 'found a city';
        }
}
foreach($userCity as $key1 => $inputcity)
{  
      foreach($cities as $key2 => $cityname)
      {
           if($inputcity == $cityname)
             echo 'found a city';
        }
}

If the input city name is composed of a single word , this would work fine , but if is something like New York , Los Angeles than in the for loop you must add :

 Help with Code Tags 
 PHP Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
elseif($key1 != 0 )
 {
   $twoWordCity=$userCity[$key1-1]." ".$userCity[$key1];
   if( $twoWordCity == $cityname )
        echo 'found a city';
}
elseif($key1 != 0 )
 {
   $twoWordCity=$userCity[$key1-1]." ".$userCity[$key1];
   if( $twoWordCity == $cityname )
        echo 'found a city';
}

Later edit :

After a second thought , it's much easier to just use the strpos() , like this :

 Help with Code Tags 
 PHP Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
$myCityNamesArray=('london','new york','sydney',......);
 
$cityInput=strtolower($_GET['key']);
 
foreach($myCityNamesArray as $cityName )
{
    if( strpos( $cityInput , $cityName ) !== false )
    {
        echo 'found it ';
        break;
     }
}
$myCityNamesArray=('london','new york','sydney',......);

$cityInput=strtolower($_GET['key']);

foreach($myCityNamesArray as $cityName )
{
    if( strpos( $cityInput , $cityName ) !== false )
    {
        echo 'found it ';
        break;
     }
}