PHP str_contains(): Check If a String Contains Text

str_contains($haystack, $needle) returns true if $needle appears anywhere in $haystack, and false otherwise. It was added in PHP 8.0 and is case-sensitive.

<?php
$sentence = 'The quick brown fox';

var_dump(str_contains($sentence, 'quick'));   // true
var_dump(str_contains($sentence, 'Quick'));   // false: case-sensitive
var_dump(str_contains($sentence, 'dog'));     // false

if (str_contains($sentence, 'fox')) {
    echo "Found a fox\n";
}

Unlike strpos(), it returns a real boolean, so there is no "found at position 0 looks like false" trap.

Syntax

str_contains(string $haystack, string $needle): bool
str_starts_with(string $haystack, string $needle): bool
str_ends_with(string $haystack, string $needle): bool

All three were added in PHP 8.0 and work byte by byte, so they handle Japanese and other UTF-8 text correctly without an mb_ version.

Check the start or end with str_starts_with and str_ends_with

<?php
$url = 'https://example.com/report.pdf';

var_dump(str_starts_with($url, 'https://'));   // true
var_dump(str_ends_with($url, '.pdf'));         // true
var_dump(str_ends_with($url, '.PDF'));         // false

$name = '株式会社コディ';
var_dump(str_starts_with($name, '株式会社'));   // true

Case-insensitive contains

There is no str_icontains(). Lowercase both strings first. mb_strtolower() also lowercases letters outside ASCII, such as É or Cyrillic, which strtolower() leaves alone.

<?php
function containsIgnoreCase(string $haystack, string $needle): bool
{
    return str_contains(mb_strtolower($haystack), mb_strtolower($needle));
}

var_dump(containsIgnoreCase('Learning PHP', 'php'));       // true
var_dump(containsIgnoreCase('ÉCOLE DE CODE', 'école'));    // true

// The same check with stripos (ASCII letters only)
var_dump(stripos('Learning PHP', 'php') !== false);        // true

The empty needle returns true

An empty needle is found in every string, including an empty one. This matters when the needle comes from a search box that the user left blank.

<?php
var_dump(str_contains('abc', ''));    // true
var_dump(str_contains('', ''));       // true

$search = '';   // a blank search field
$title = 'PHP str_contains';
$matches = $search !== '' && str_contains($title, $search);
var_dump($matches);

Check if a string contains any or all of several words

str_contains() takes one needle. Loop over an array of needles: return as soon as one matches for "any", or as soon as one fails for "all".

<?php
function containsAny(string $haystack, array $needles): bool
{
    foreach ($needles as $needle) {
        if (str_contains($haystack, $needle)) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

function containsAll(string $haystack, array $needles): bool
{
    foreach ($needles as $needle) {
        if (!str_contains($haystack, $needle)) {
            return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}

$comment = 'Buy cheap watches now';

var_dump(containsAny($comment, ['cheap', 'free', 'winner']));   // true
var_dump(containsAll($comment, ['cheap', 'free']));             // false

To check whether a value is one of the elements of an array, as opposed to a substring of a string, use in_array().

Before PHP 8: strpos !== false

Code that has to run on PHP 7 uses strpos() with a strict comparison. It gives the same answer as str_contains(), except for an empty needle: PHP 7's strpos() printed Warning: strpos(): Empty needle and returned false.

<?php
$haystack = 'php is fun';

var_dump(str_contains($haystack, 'php'));       // PHP 8
var_dump(strpos($haystack, 'php') !== false);   // PHP 7 and later

// The bug to avoid: position 0 is falsy
var_dump((bool) strpos($haystack, 'php'));

The last line prints bool(false) even though the text is there, because php sits at position 0. Replacing such checks with str_contains() is one of the easiest PHP 8 upgrades.