PHP 8.0 and higher

Since PHP 8.0 you can use the

str_starts_with Manual and

str_ends_with Manual

Example

echo str_starts_with($str, '|');

PHP before 8.0

function startsWith( $haystack, $needle ) {
     $length = strlen( $needle );
     return substr( $haystack, 0, $length ) === $needle;
}

function endsWith( $haystack, $needle ) {
    $length = strlen( $needle );
    if( !$length ) {
        return true;
    }
    return substr( $haystack, -$length ) === $needle;
}

All answers so far seem to do loads of unnecessary work, strlen calculations, string allocations (substr), etc. The 'strpos' and 'stripos' functions return the index of the first occurrence of $needle in $haystack:

function startsWith($haystack,$needle,$case=true)
{
    if ($case)
        return strpos($haystack, $needle, 0) === 0;

    return stripos($haystack, $needle, 0) === 0;
}

function endsWith($haystack,$needle,$case=true)
{
    $expectedPosition = strlen($haystack) - strlen($needle);

    if ($case)
        return strrpos($haystack, $needle, 0) === $expectedPosition;

    return strripos($haystack, $needle, 0) === $expectedPosition;
}

function startsWith($haystack, $needle, $case = true) {
    if ($case) {
        return (strcmp(substr($haystack, 0, strlen($needle)), $needle) === 0);
    }
    return (strcasecmp(substr($haystack, 0, strlen($needle)), $needle) === 0);
}

function endsWith($haystack, $needle, $case = true) {
    if ($case) {
        return (strcmp(substr($haystack, strlen($haystack) - strlen($needle)), $needle) === 0);
    }
    return (strcasecmp(substr($haystack, strlen($haystack) - strlen($needle)), $needle) === 0);
}

Credit To:

Check if a string ends with another string

Check if a string begins with another string

PHP 8 update

PHP 8 includes new str_starts_with and str_ends_with functions that finally provide a performant and convenient solution to this problem:

$str = "beginningMiddleEnd";
if (str_starts_with($str, "beg")) echo "printed\n";
if (str_starts_with($str, "Beg")) echo "not printed\n";
if (str_ends_with($str, "End")) echo "printed\n";
if (str_ends_with($str, "end")) echo "not printed\n";

The RFC for this feature provides more information, and also a discussion of the merits and problems of obvious (and not-so-obvious) userland implementations.

The regex functions above, but with the other tweaks also suggested above:

 function startsWith($needle, $haystack) {
     return preg_match('/^' . preg_quote($needle, '/') . '/', $haystack);
 }

 function endsWith($needle, $haystack) {
     return preg_match('/' . preg_quote($needle, '/') . '$/', $haystack);
 }

Fastest endsWith() solution:

# Checks if a string ends in a string
function endsWith($haystack, $needle) {
    return substr($haystack,-strlen($needle))===$needle;
}

Benchmark:

# This answer
function endsWith($haystack, $needle) {
    return substr($haystack,-strlen($needle))===$needle;
}

# Accepted answer
function endsWith2($haystack, $needle) {
    $length = strlen($needle);

    return $length === 0 ||
    (substr($haystack, -$length) === $needle);
}

# Second most-voted answer
function endsWith3($haystack, $needle) {
    // search forward starting from end minus needle length characters
    if ($needle === '') {
        return true;
    }
    $diff = \strlen($haystack) - \strlen($needle);
    return $diff >= 0 && strpos($haystack, $needle, $diff) !== false;
}

# Regex answer
function endsWith4($haystack, $needle) {
    return preg_match('/' . preg_quote($needle, '/') . '$/', $haystack);
}

function timedebug() {
    $test = 10000000;

    $time1 = microtime(true);
    for ($i=0; $i < $test; $i++) {
        $tmp = endsWith('TestShortcode', 'Shortcode');
    }
    $time2 = microtime(true);
    $result1 = $time2 - $time1;

    for ($i=0; $i < $test; $i++) {
        $tmp = endsWith2('TestShortcode', 'Shortcode');
    }
    $time3 = microtime(true);
    $result2 = $time3 - $time2;

    for ($i=0; $i < $test; $i++) {
        $tmp = endsWith3('TestShortcode', 'Shortcode');
    }
    $time4 = microtime(true);
    $result3 = $time4 - $time3;

    for ($i=0; $i < $test; $i++) {
        $tmp = endsWith4('TestShortcode', 'Shortcode');
    }
    $time5 = microtime(true);
    $result4 = $time5 - $time4;

    echo $test.'x endsWith: '.$result1.' seconds # This answer<br>';
    echo $test.'x endsWith2: '.$result4.' seconds # Accepted answer<br>';
    echo $test.'x endsWith3: '.$result2.' seconds # Second most voted answer<br>';
    echo $test.'x endsWith4: '.$result3.' seconds # Regex answer<br>';
    exit;
}
timedebug();

Benchmark Results:

10000000x endsWith: 1.5760900974274 seconds # This answer
10000000x endsWith2: 3.7102129459381 seconds # Accepted answer
10000000x endsWith3: 1.8731069564819 seconds # Second most voted answer
10000000x endsWith4: 2.1521229743958 seconds # Regex answer

If speed is important for you, try this.(I believe it is the fastest method)

Works only for strings and if $haystack is only 1 character

function startsWithChar($needle, $haystack)
{
   return ($needle === $haystack[0]);
}

function endsWithChar($needle, $haystack)
{
   return ($needle === $haystack[strlen($haystack) - 1]);
}

$str='|apples}';
echo startsWithChar('|',$str); //Returns true
echo endsWithChar('}',$str); //Returns true
echo startsWithChar('=',$str); //Returns false
echo endsWithChar('#',$str); //Returns false

Here's a multi-byte safe version of the accepted answer, it works fine for UTF-8 strings:

function startsWith($haystack, $needle)
{
    $length = mb_strlen($needle, 'UTF-8');
    return (mb_substr($haystack, 0, $length, 'UTF-8') === $needle);
}

function endsWith($haystack, $needle)
{
    $length = mb_strlen($needle, 'UTF-8');
    return $length === 0 ||
        (mb_substr($haystack, -$length, $length, 'UTF-8') === $needle);
}

No-copy and no-intern-loop:

function startsWith(string $string, string $start): bool
{
    return strrpos($string, $start, - strlen($string)) !== false;
}

function endsWith(string $string, string $end): bool
{
    return ($offset = strlen($string) - strlen($end)) >= 0 
    && strpos($string, $end, $offset) !== false;
}

You also can use regular expressions:

function endsWith($haystack, $needle, $case=true) {
  return preg_match("/.*{$needle}$/" . (($case) ? "" : "i"), $haystack);
}

You can use the fnmatch function for this.

// Starts with.
fnmatch('prefix*', $haystack);
// Ends with.
fnmatch('*suffix', $haystack);

function startsWith($haystack, $needle)
{
    $length = mb_strlen($needle);
    return mb_substr($haystack, 0, $length) === $needle;
}

function endsWith($haystack, $needle)
{
    $length = mb_strlen($needle);
    if(!$length)
    {
     return true;
    }
    
    return mb_substr($haystack, -$length) === $needle;
}

String length and character positioning are two examples where multi-byte vs single-byte can play a difference. Standard strings in PHP are char arrays just as in C, which are always single byte. so the third character in a string (str[2]) by normal strlen would actually be the start of the second character if UTF-16. If looking for { at the beginning of a string to see if a string could be JSON this wouldn't be a huge deal since { is a valid single byte character such as in ASCII encoding, but if checking the end of a string for the emogi vs to judge reactions it's a different story since they are multipbyte characters.