how to check if a string contains a substring from an array of strings in JavaScript

Question

I'm still learning JavaScript but I just can't seem to find a way to see if a string contains a substring.

Basically I have some Titles of some individuals and I want to see if the Title contains strings like "President" or "Sr" in the title this is what i have so far but does not seem to be working.

var title = "President of Sales";
var arrayOfTitles = ["President","Chief","VP","SVP","Director","Manager","Mrg","Sr","Senior","Executive Assistant","Principle Architect","GM","Technical Advisor"];
var re = new RegExp(arrayOfTitles.join("|"),"i");
for(i = 0; i < arrayOfTitles.length; i++){
 if ( re.test(gr.title)){
 return; 
 }
 }

However this code will not work with String likes "Jr VP" or "President of Sales". Is there a way to build an array of Regex of these strings?

any help would be great thanks

• C3roe: You are looking for exact matches, so don't use regex, use indexOf. If you want a case-insensitive search, apply toLowerCase on string and keywords. And, unless the above is in a function context, return doesn't make much sense there. Use break to leave the loop, and set a flag beforehand if you're interested in the positive or negative outcome of the whole test.
• nnnnnn: Using a single regex built from the arrayOfTitles should work, but if you do that you don't need to loop over the same array. Try re.test(title) without the loop - that worked fine for me.
• agarc: Im looking for something that will match anything with these keywords in them

Answer 1

You do not need to run a loop

var title = "President of Sales";
var arrayOfTitles = ["President","Chief","VP","SVP","Director","Manager","Mrg","Sr","Senior","Executive Assistant","Principle Architect","GM","Technical Advisor"];
var regex = new RegExp(arrayOfTitles.join("|"), "i");
//The regex will return true if found in the array
if ( regex.test(title) ){
 console.log("has");
}

• agarc: Will this work for any String that contains on of the Strings in the Array?

Answer 2

How about something simple like :

var title = "President of Sales";
var arrayOfTitles = ["President","Chief","VP","SVP","Director","Manager","Mrg","Sr","Senior","Executive Assistant","Principle Architect","GM","Technical Advisor"];
var matches = (function() {
 for(var i=0; i < arrayOfTitles.length; i++) {
	if(title.indexOf(arrayOfTitles[i]) > -1) { return true; }
 }
 return false;
}());

Answer 3

You can also use the includes() function, instead of indexOf().

 var title = "President of Sales";
 var arrayOfTitles = ["President","Chief","VP","SVP","Director","Manager","Mrg","Sr","Senior","Executive Assistant","Principle Architect","GM","Technical Advisor"];
 var matches = (function() {
 for(var i=0; i < arrayOfTitles.length; i++) {
 if(title.includes(arrayOfTitles[i])) { return true; }
 }
 return false;
 }());