Searching in an Array?

[Liquid Fire]

With PHP, there is a in_array function to see if a value in currently stored in the array.  Is there a similar type function for javascript?

[rhodesa]

not that i'm aware of. you can just loop over the elements, or use a JavaScript library like jQuery:

http://docs.jquery.com/Utilities/jQuery.inArray

[Liquid Fire]

This is ironic, I actually use jQuery and was going to ask the jQuery mailing list but i thought that was more of a javascript question than a jQuery question.

 

Thanks.

[Psycho]

I'd just add a couple of comments:

 

1) If you do build a function to do this, be sure to "break" out of the loop whne you find the value to prevent unnecessary execution.

 

2) You can also do this without looping through the array with a little slight of hand. However, it may or may not be more efficient based upon the size of the array. You would also want to use delimiters that would not appear in the data.:

 

(array is the array to be searched)

function in_array(searchArray, searchString)
{
    var array_to_string = '~' + searchArray.join('~') = '~';
    return ( (array_to_string.search(searchString)!=-1) ? true : false);
}

 

 

[rhodesa]

I'd just add a couple of comments:

 

1) If you do build a function to do this, be sure to "break" out of the loop whne you find the value to prevent unnecessary execution.

 

2) You can also do this without looping through the array with a little slight of hand. However, it may or may not be more efficient based upon the size of the array. You would also want to use delimiters that would not appear in the data.:

 

(array is the array to be searched)

function in_array(searchArray, searchString)
{
    var array_to_string = '~' + searchArray.join('~') = '~';
    return ( (array_to_string.search(searchString)!=-1) ? true : false);
}

 

you will also want to add '~' to the beginning and end of your search string

[Psycho]

you will also want to add '~' to the beginning and end of your search string

 

Yes, I forgot to add that (I also used a '=' instead of '+' when creating the array_to_string to add it at then end of that) - thanks.

 

Fixed:

function in_array(searchArray, searchString)
{
    var array_to_string = '~' + searchArray.join('~') + '~';
    return ( (array_to_string.search('~'+searchString+'~')!=-1) ? true : false);
}