Regex city name from string and then compare to text file

[tadakan]

I'm trying to regex a city name from a string (an email that gets passed to the script) and then compare it to a text file so that I can cue an IF statement on whether or not it matches a city in the text file.

 

I've got a regex that I think is correct, but I'm not sure how to pull the city name from the $matches and then load the list of cities and compare it.  I've been messing with array_slice() and explode() and was starting to devolve into layers upon layers of preg_matchs so it seemed like it was time to ask for help.

 

/*Get email contents from the piped email.  I'm just plugging
in the value in the form that it will come from the email
so I don't have to send endless emails to myself to test */
//$email = file_get_contents('php://stdin');
$email = "Locations: King City";

       //Regular expression to find the city name
$reg_exCity = '/Locations: (\w+) (\w+)?/';

//Apply the city regex to the contents of the email
preg_match($reg_exCity, $email, $city);

       //store city names in array
      $citiesArray = explode(",","cities.txt");

 

at this point I'm not even sure what the best way to compare the list to the value from the email will be.  I guess another preg_match?

         //turn the name of the city into a regex
$reg_exCities = '/'.$city[1].'/'.'i';       

        if (preg_match($reg_exCities, $citiesArray, $matches)) {
                 echo "this one!";
               }
        else {
                 echo "not this one";
               }

 

Thanks for any help, it's been a while since I did much scripting, and I was never that great at it so this project is really making my brain stretch.

[fugix]

Instead of using another preg_match() etc to try and compare your email value to your text file, why not use the function in_array() which compares the value of mixed types of data to a value in an array.

 

        if (in_array($cities[1], $citiesArray) {

                 echo "this one!";

               }

        else {

                 echo "not this one";

               }

[tadakan]

I experimented with in_array() a little bit, but I still have the problem of turning an array with up to two values (ie a city name with two parts) into a single string... OR potentially rewriting my regex so that it will make $match[1] include both halves of the city name.  Thoughts as to which is better or if one will even work?

[tadakan]

Related to that problem, given:

$email = "Locations: King City";
$reg_exCity = '/Locations: (\w+) (\w+)?/';
preg_match($reg_exCity, $email, $city);
echo $city[1];
echo $city[2];

returns KingCity

 

$city1 = array_slice($city,1,2);
echo $city1;

returns Array

 

I think I'm trying to use the correct function, but I'm obviously doing it wrong.  Suggestions?

[fugix]

Okay I see your issue, you are telling your regex to remember two strings instead of just the one. Try this.

$reg_exCity = '/^Locations: (\w+\s?\w+)$/i';