Using jQuery to do "does contain"

Question

I have an array of strings, I want to use jQuery to see if a particular string is contained within the array?

Can i do this with jQuery>?

Answer 1

You can use $.inArray() and check that the result is not == -1, like this:

var arr = [ "string1", "string2" ];
jQuery.inArray("string1", arr) // returns 0
jQuery.inArray("string2", arr) // returns 1
jQuery.inArray("string3", arr) // returns -1

And for the flame wars about "why use jquery?" here...it's because older IE (and maybe current IIRC) doesn't have the Array.indexOf function, $.indexOf() will use the built-in Array.indexOf is it's present, it's just a wrapper to take care of IE not having this.

Alternatively, you can add the Array.indexOf method if it's not present, bobince shows how to do that here.