How to check if a string contains text from an array of substrings in JavaScript?

Solution 1:

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}"`);
}

Solution 2:

One line solution

substringsArray.some(substring=>yourBigString.includes(substring))

Returns true\false if substring exists\does'nt exist

Needs ES6 support

Solution 3:

var yourstring = 'tasty food'; // the string to check against


var substrings = ['foo','bar'],
    length = substrings.length;
while(length--) {
   if (yourstring.indexOf(substrings[length])!=-1) {
       // one of the substrings is in yourstring
   }
}