php function to search array and return count

Question

I'm still learning php and I have tried implementing similar functions that I have seen on this site but can't get any of them to work. What I want to do is basic and I thought I should have it but can't get it.

Basically I want to return a count of the number of times a string appears in an array.

Here is what I have been trying. It keeps giving me 0, but should be returning 4 as there are 4 entries that have a logoutTime with May in them. Thanks in advance for and guidance. When I try to echo or print $maycount I'am just getting 0.

<?php
function MayVPNCount($searchVPNArrayResults, $may){
    $may = 'may';
    $maycount = 0;

    foreach($vpnSessionArray as $oneVPNSession){
        if (strpos($oneVPNSession->logoutTime, $may) !== false)
            $maycount += 1;
        }
    return($maycount);
}
?>

Answer 1

Maybe you need something like this:

function MayVPNCount($searchVPNArrayResults, $may){
    //in this case $searchVPNArrayResults is where Im going to look
    //$may is what Im looking for.

    $text = $searchVPNArrayResults;

    $stringIMlooking = $may;

    $position = 0;
    $maycount = 0;

    //stripos() intead of strpos() for case insensive
    while (($position  = strpos($text, $stringIMlooking, $position ))!== false) {    

    $position  = $position  + strlen($stringIMlooking);


    $maycount++;

    }
    return $maycount;
    }


echo MayVPNCount("the whole text one two tree for one five", "one");

you need to change the variables. If you have an array, you could use implode() function to get one string.

As @rickdenhaan said, substr_count() is better:

function MayVPNCount($searchVPNArrayResults, $may){

    $text = $searchVPNArrayResults;

    $stringIMlooking = $may;

    //case sensitive
    return substr_count($text, $may) ;

     //case insensituve:
    //return substr_count(strtoupper($text),strtoupper($may));

}