I have to say I like the simplicity of Gre_gor's answer, but for a more dynamic method you can also use array_filter():
function my_array_search($array, $needle){
$matches = array_filter($array, function ($haystack) use ($needle){
// return stripos($needle, $haystack) !== false; make the function case insensitive
return strpos($needle, $haystack) !== false;
});
return empty($matches) ? false : $matches;
}
$namesArray = ['Peter', 'Glenn', 'Meg', 'Griffin'];
Examples:
if(my_array_search($namesArray, 'Glenn Quagmire')){
echo 'There is'; // Glenn
} else {
echo 'There is not';
}
// optionally:
if(($retval = my_array_search($namesArray, 'Peter Griffin'))){
echo 'There is';
print_r($retval); // Peter, Griffin.
} else {
echo 'There is not';
}
Now $retval is optional, it captures an array of matching subjects. This works because if the $matches variable in my_array_search is empty, it returns false instead of an empty array.