use regex to match a string with an array

Question

I created a regex with the string I am searching for by:

var re = new RegExp(searchTerm, "ig");

And i have an array that I want to search through that has these terms:

var websiteName = [
 "google", "youtube", "twitter", "medium", "amazon", "airbnb", "campaiyn", "uber", "dropbox", "asana",
 "slack", "soundcloud", "reddit", "uscitp", "facebook"
];

If my search term is reddit testtest test, I would not get a match when I call the match function:

 for(var i = 0; i < websiteName.length; i = i + 1) {
 if(websiteName[i].match(re) != null) {
 possibleNameSearchResults[i] = i;
 }
 }

How can i structure my regex statement so that when I search through my array that it will still return true if just one of the words match?

• nick: Why not iterate through the websiteName array and use each element as the regexp search term for the string.

Answer 1

I think you want something like this:

var searchTerm = 'reddit testtest test';
var websiteNames = ["google", "youtube", "twitter", "medium", "amazon", "airbnb", "campaiyn", "uber", "dropbox", "asana", "slack", "soundcloud", "reddit", "uscitp", "facebook"];
// filter the websiteNames array based on each website's name
var possibleNameSearchResults = websiteNames.filter(function(website) {
 // split the searchTerm into individual words, and
 // and test if any of the words match the current website's name
 return searchTerm.split(' ').some(function(term) {
 return website.match(new RegExp(term, 'ig')) !== null;
 });
});
document.writeln(JSON.stringify(possibleNameSearchResults))

Edit: If you want the index instead of the actual value of the item, you are probably better off going with a more standard forEach loop, like this:

var searchTerm = 'reddit testtest test',
 websiteNames = ["google", "youtube", "twitter", "medium", "amazon", "airbnb", "campaiyn", "uber", "dropbox", "asana", "slack", "soundcloud", "reddit", "uscitp", "facebook"],
 possibleNameSearchResults = []
// loop over each website name and test it against all of
// the keywords in the searchTerm
websiteNames.forEach(function(website, index) {
 var isMatch = searchTerm.split(' ').some(function(term) {
 return website.match(new RegExp(term, 'ig')) !== null;
 });
 
 if (isMatch) {
 possibleNameSearchResults.push(index);
 }
})
document.writeln(JSON.stringify(possibleNameSearchResults))

• ogk: thank you!. is there anywa to return the index of the search result instead of the actual value?
• Nathan Friend: @ogk - Sure, I've edited my answer to show another example that provides the index instead of the value.