How to check if a string contains text from an array of substrings in JavaScript?
There's nothing built-in that will do that for you, you'll have to write a function for it, although it can be just a callback to the some
array method.
Two approaches for you:
- Array
some
method - Regular expression
Array some
The array some
method (added in ES5) makes this quite straightforward:
if (substrings.some(function(v) { return str.indexOf(v) >= 0; })) {
// There's at least one
}
Even better with an arrow function and the newish includes
method (both ES2015+):
if (substrings.some(v => str.includes(v))) {
// There's at least one
}
Live Example:
const substrings = ["one", "two", "three"];
let str;
// Setup
console.log(`Substrings: ${substrings}`);
// Try it where we expect a match
str = "this has one";
if (substrings.some(v => str.includes(v))) {
console.log(`Match using "${str}"`);
} else {
console.log(`No match using "${str}"`);
}
// Try it where we DON'T expect a match
str = "this doesn't have any";
if (substrings.some(v => str.includes(v))) {
console.log(`Match using "${str}"`);
} else {
console.log(`No match using "${str}"`);
}
Regular expression
If you know the strings don't contain any of the characters that are special in regular expressions, then you can cheat a bit, like this:
if (new RegExp(substrings.join("|")).test(string)) {
// At least one match
}
...which creates a regular expression that's a series of alternations for the substrings you're looking for (e.g., one|two
) and tests to see if there are matches for any of them, but if any of the substrings contains any characters that are special in regexes (*
, [
, etc.), you'd have to escape them first and you're better off just doing the boring loop instead. For info about escaping them, see this question's answers.
Live Example:
const substrings = ["one", "two", "three"];
let str;
// Setup
console.log(`Substrings: ${substrings}`);
// Try it where we expect a match
str = "this has one";
if (new RegExp(substrings.join("|")).test(str)) {
console.log(`Match using "${str}"`);
} else {
console.log(`No match using "${str}"`);
}
// Try it where we DON'T expect a match
str = "this doesn't have any";
if (new RegExp(substrings.join("|")).test(str)) {
console.log(`Match using "${str}"`);
} else {
console.log(`No match using "${str}"`);
}
One line solution
substringsArray.some(substring=>yourBigString.includes(substring))
Returns true\false
if substring exists\does'nt exist
Needs ES6 support