Get the index of a certain value in an array in PHP

I have an array:

$list = array('string1', 'string2', 'string3');

I want to get the index for a given value (i.e. 1 for string2 and 2 for string3)

All I want is the position of the strings in the array

• string1 is 0
• string2 is 1
• string3 is 2

How to achieve this?

Answer

array_search is the way to do it.

array_search ( mixed $needle , array $haystack [, bool $strict = FALSE ] ) : mixed

From the docs:

$array = array(0 => 'blue', 1 => 'red', 2 => 'green', 3 => 'red');

$key = array_search('green', $array); // $key = 2;
$key = array_search('red', $array);   // $key = 1;

You could loop over the array manually and find the index but why do it when there’s a function for that. This function always returns a key and it will work well with associative and normal arrays.