How to loop an exploded list of strings? - php

Question

I have a list of country names in an input field like:
Spain Italy France Germany
So first of i make all the strings lowercase in order not to have a mismatch with the country name in the geoJson data. Then I compare the strings with the propriety name in the geoJson, and if it matches, i push it in the array.
$json = file_get_contents("../world_ita.json");
$data = json_decode($json, true);
$states = array();
$item = null;
$stateList = strtolower( usp_get_meta(false, 'usp-custom-3'));
$stateList = htmlspecialchars_decode ( $stateList);
$stateList = preg_replace("/\w[\w']*/e", "ucwords('\\0')", $stateList);
$stateList = explode(' ',$stateList);
foreach($data["features"] as $feature) {
$id = $feature["id"];
$name = $feature["properties"]["name"];
$feature["properties"]["density"] = 0;
foreach($stateList as $state) {
if ($name == $state) {
if (!in_array($name, $states)) {
$item = $feature;
array_push($states, $name);
}
} else { ?>
statesData.features.forEach(function(state) {
if ("<?php echo $id;?>" == state.id) {
state.properties.density += 10;
}
});
<?php }
}
}
if (!is_null($item)) : ?>
statesData.features.push(<?php echo json_encode($item); ?>);
<?php endif; ?>
The above is not working and it breaks it. I thought to first explode the strings and then loop them and run the other bits of the code, I am not sure where I am doing something wrong there.
UPDATE
What the above code does is to repeat the following for each single object in the geoJson
statesData.features.forEach(function(state) {
and it is not printing the coordinates as it should as I run the following by the end of it:
if (!is_null($item)) : ?>
statesData.features.push(<?php echo json_encode($item); ?>);
<?php endif;
It is only printing one single country coordinates but the name are the same as per the geoJson, so it should print all matching ones.
UPDATE 2
The code I am trying out is exactly this (different from the previous as per the new update):
var statesData = {
"type": "FeatureCollection",
"features": []
};
<?php
$json = file_get_contents("http://www.jikupin.com/world_ita.json");
$data = json_decode($json, true);
$states = array();
$classesForCountries = [];
$item = null;
$stateList = strtolower( usp_get_meta(false, 'usp-custom-3'));
$stateList = htmlspecialchars_decode ( $stateList);
$stateList = preg_replace("/\w[\w']*/e", "ucwords('\\0')", $stateList);
$stateList = explode(' ',$stateList);
foreach($data["features"] as $feature) {
$name = $feature["properties"]["name"];
foreach($stateList as $state) {
if ($name == $state) {
if (!in_array($name, $states)) {
$item = $feature;
array_push($states, $name);
}
}
}
}
if (!is_null($item)) : ?>
statesData.features.push(<?php echo json_encode($item); ?>);
<?php
endif;
?>
The above is not printing any coordinates, If I remove the explode and the loop I do for it, meaning if i run it for one single country, it works. When I run the explode and the loop for for that, and I try var_dumb($states), i get
value (0)