Question

158

jQuery Search for Text in a Variable?

rated 0 times [ 159] [ 1] / answers: 1 / hits: 39010 / 14 Years ago, mon, january 3, 2011, 12:00:00

I have a variable that contains some text, some html, basically can be a string. I need to search the variable for a specific string to process that variable differently if it is contained. Here is a snippet of what I am trying to do, does not work obviously :)

$.each(data.results,

   function(i, results) {

   var text = this.text                   

   var pattern = new RegExp(^[SEARCHTERM]$);

    if(pattern.test( text ) )

    alert(text);  //was hoping this would alert the SEARCHTERM if found...

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3 Years ago

answered 14 Years ago tobyl · Accepted Answer

You could use .indexOf() instead to perform the search.

If the string is not found, it returns -1. If it is found, it returns the first zero-based index where it was located.

var text = this.text;

var term = SEARCHTERM;



if( text.indexOf( term ) != -1 )

    alert(term);

If you were hoping for an exact match, which your use of ^ and $ seems to imply, you could just do an === comparison.

var text = this.text;

var term = SEARCHTERM;



if( text === term )

    alert(term);

EDIT: Based on your comment, you want an exact match, but === isn't working, while indexOf() is. This is sometimes the case if there's some whitespace that needs to be trimmed.

Try trimming the whitespace using jQuery's jQuery.trim() method.

var text = $.trim( this.text );

var term = SEARCHTERM;



if( text === term )

    alert(term);

If this doesn't work, I'd recommend logging this.text to the console to see if it is the value you expect.