using PHP to find exact value in a string - php

Question

the current tasks at hand is using PHP to check if data exists
to make things short the problem is:
i am trying to search some of the available sizes in a unorganized string.
sizes are
SM/M M/L L/XL XS S M L XL XXL 28 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 28 X 30 28 X 32
currently most of the issues are solved by utilizing whitespaces to disgtinush unique variable, but when it comes to (number X number) as a phrase it becomes very difficult.
when I search for "28" it also detect as found when seeing "28 X 30"
or when I search for unique number " 30 " with the whitespaces included, it still detects the 28 X "30"
Is there any method to tackle this issue?

Answer 1

What you could do is make the string easier to deal with by first transforming the nnn X nnn strings and removing spaces from them:
//BEFORE: SM/M M/L L/XL XS S M L XL XXL 28 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 28 X 30 28 X 32
//AFTER: SM/M M/L L/XL XS S M L XL XXL 28 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 28X30 28X32
$sizes=preg_replace('/(\d+) X (\d+)/', '$1X$2', $sizes);
Now you can explode the string on spaces
$sizeArray=explode(' ', $sizes);
With all the distinct sizes in an array, you can use in_array to look for a specific size code.
//we want to find this
$searchFor='28 X 30';
//our codes no longer have spaces...
$searchFor=str_replace(' ', '', $searchFor);
if (in_array($searchFor, $sizeArray)) {
//great!
}