Searching Posts Programmatically in a Wordpress Plugin

Question

If I navigate to Posts -> All Posts in a Wordpress install, there's a Search Box in the upper right hand corner. Entering terms in this box and clicking the Search Posts button will perform a search.

Does Wordpress provide a hook, function, or other API that would allow me to programmatically perform the same (or a similar) search? i.e. I pass in a string as terms and get back a PHP array of results without needing to write any SQL myself.

If not, does anyone here know where in the Wordpress core code the above search happens? (so I cam mimic the behavior as best as possible)

Thank you!

Answer 1

Per comments above from mmm

Try this

$posts = get_posts(["s" => "string to search"]); 

Also, Covering the get_posts API is a bit beyond a single StackExchange answer, but if you want to dive deep you'll find more informations in the codex.