How do I match this text faster?

Question

I'm building an autosuggest for names. When the user types in the textbox, it hits the server and runs this:

var names = [ list of 1000 names ]; //I have a list of 1000 names, this is static.
var query = 'alex';
var matched_names = [];

//This is when it gets slow....
names.forEach(function(name){
    if(name.indexOf(query) >= 0){
        matched_names.push(name);
    }
});

return matched_names;

How can I make this faster? I'm using Node.js

Answer 1

If the names are static then move this code to the client and run it there. The only reason to run code like this on the server is if the data source is dynamic in some way.

Doing this logic client-side will dramatically improve performance.

Answer 2

You should probably use filter instead, for one thing, because it's native:

var names = [ /* list of 1000 names */ ];
var query = 'alex';
var matched_names = names.filter(function(name) {
    return name.indexOf(query) > -1;
});
return matched_names;