How to find if an array contains a specific string in JavaScript/jQuery?

Tuesday 8 March 2016

Can someone tell me how to detect if "specialword" appears in an array? Example:

categories: [
    "specialword"

    "word1"
    "word2"
]

Answer

You really don't need jQuery for this.

var myarr = ["I", "like", "turtles"];
var arraycontainsturtles = (myarr.indexOf("turtles") > -1);

Hint: indexOf returns a number, representing the position where the specified searchvalue occurs for the first time, or -1 if it never
occurs

function arrayContains(needle, arrhaystack)
{

    return (arrhaystack.indexOf(needle) > -1);
}

It's worth noting that array.indexOf(..) is not supported in IE < 9, but jQuery's indexOf(...) function will work even for those older versions.

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