How do I check if an array includes an object in JavaScript?

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/237104

Question

What is the most concise and efficient way to find out if a JavaScript array contains an object?

This is the only way I know to do it:

function contains(a, obj) {
    for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
        if (a[i] === obj) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

Is there a better and more concise way to accomplish this?

This is very closely related to Stack Overflow question Best way to find an item in a JavaScript Array? which addresses finding objects in an array using indexOf.

Was it helpful?

Solution

Current browsers have Array#includes, which does exactly that, is widely supported, and has a polyfill for older browsers.

> ['joe', 'jane', 'mary'].includes('jane');
true

You can also use Array#indexOf, which is less direct, but doesn't require Polyfills for out of date browsers.

jQuery offers $.inArray, which is functionally equivalent to Array#indexOf.

underscore.js, a JavaScript utility library, offers _.contains(list, value), alias _.include(list, value), both of which use indexOf internally if passed a JavaScript array.

Some other frameworks offer similar methods:

Notice that some frameworks implement this as a function, while others add the function to the array prototype.

OTHER TIPS

Update: As @orip mentions in comments, the linked benchmark was done in 2008, so results may not be relevant for modern browsers. However, you probably need this to support non-modern browsers anyway and they probably haven't been updated since. Always test for yourself.

As others have said, the iteration through the array is probably the best way, but it has been proven that a decreasing while loop is the fastest way to iterate in JavaScript. So you may want to rewrite your code as follows:

function contains(a, obj) {
    var i = a.length;
    while (i--) {
       if (a[i] === obj) {
           return true;
       }
    }
    return false;
}

Of course, you may as well extend Array prototype:

Array.prototype.contains = function(obj) {
    var i = this.length;
    while (i--) {
        if (this[i] === obj) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

And now you can simply use the following:

alert([1, 2, 3].contains(2)); // => true
alert([1, 2, 3].contains('2')); // => false

indexOf maybe, but it's a "JavaScript extension to the ECMA-262 standard; as such it may not be present in other implementations of the standard."

Example:

[1, 2, 3].indexOf(1) => 0
["foo", "bar", "baz"].indexOf("bar") => 1
[1, 2, 3].indexOf(4) => -1

AFAICS Microsoft does not offer some kind of alternative to this, but you can add similar functionality to arrays in Internet Explorer (and other browsers that don't support indexOf) if you want to, as a quick Google search reveals (for example, this one).

ECMAScript 7 introduces Array.prototype.includes.

It can be used like this:

[1, 2, 3].includes(2); // true
[1, 2, 3].includes(4); // false

It also accepts an optional second argument fromIndex:

[1, 2, 3].includes(3, 3); // false
[1, 2, 3].includes(3, -1); // true

Unlike indexOf, which uses Strict Equality Comparison, includes compares using SameValueZero equality algorithm. That means that you can detect if an array includes a NaN:

[1, 2, NaN].includes(NaN); // true

Also unlike indexOf, includes does not skip missing indices:

new Array(5).includes(undefined); // true

Currently it's still a draft but can be polyfilled to make it work on all browsers.

b is the value, and a is the array. It returns true or false:

function(a, b) {
    return a.indexOf(b) != -1
}

The top answers assume primitive types but if you want to find out if an array contains an object with some trait, Array.prototype.some() is a very elegant solution:

const items = [ {a: '1'}, {a: '2'}, {a: '3'} ]

items.some(item => item.a === '3')  // returns true
items.some(item => item.a === '4')  // returns false

The nice thing about it is that the iteration is aborted once the element is found so unnecessary iteration cycles are saved.

Also, it fits nicely in an if statement since it returns a boolean:

if (items.some(item => item.a === '3')) {
  // do something
}

* As jamess pointed out in the comment, as of today, September 2018, Array.prototype.some() is fully supported: caniuse.com support table

Here's a JavaScript 1.6 compatible implementation of Array.indexOf:

if (!Array.indexOf) {
    Array.indexOf = [].indexOf ?
        function(arr, obj, from) {
            return arr.indexOf(obj, from);
        } :
        function(arr, obj, from) { // (for IE6)
            var l = arr.length,
                i = from ? parseInt((1 * from) + (from < 0 ? l : 0), 10) : 0;
            i = i < 0 ? 0 : i;
            for (; i < l; i++) {
                if (i in arr && arr[i] === obj) {
                    return i;
                }
            }
            return -1;
        };
}

Use:

function isInArray(array, search)
{
    return array.indexOf(search) >= 0;
}

// Usage
if(isInArray(my_array, "my_value"))
{
    //...
}

Extending the JavaScript Array object is a really bad idea because you introduce new properties (your custom methods) into for-in loops which can break existing scripts. A few years ago the authors of the Prototype library had to re-engineer their library implementation to remove just this kind of thing.

If you don't need to worry about compatibility with other JavaScript running on your page, go for it, otherwise, I'd recommend the more awkward, but safer free-standing function solution.

Thinking out of the box for a second, if you are making this call many many times, it is vastly more efficient to use an associative array a Map to do lookups using a hash function.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Map

One-liner:

function contains(arr, x) {
    return arr.filter(function(elem) { return elem == x }).length > 0;
}

I use the following:

Array.prototype.contains = function (v) {
    return this.indexOf(v) > -1;
}

var a = [ 'foo', 'bar' ];

a.contains('foo'); // true
a.contains('fox'); // false

function contains(a, obj) {
    return a.some(function(element){return element == obj;})
}

Array.prototype.some() was added to the ECMA-262 standard in the 5th edition

A hopefully faster bidirectional indexOf / lastIndexOf alternative

2015

While the new method includes is very nice, the support is basically zero for now.

It's long time that I was thinking of way to replace the slow indexOf/lastIndexOf functions.

A performant way has already been found, looking at the top answers. From those I chose the contains function posted by @Damir Zekic which should be the fastest one. But it also states that the benchmarks are from 2008 and so are outdated.

I also prefer while over for, but for not a specific reason I ended writing the function with a for loop. It could be also done with a while --.

I was curious if the iteration was much slower if I check both sides of the array while doing it. Apparently no, and so this function is around two times faster than the top voted ones. Obviously it's also faster than the native one. This in a real world environment, where you never know if the value you are searching is at the beginning or at the end of the array.

When you know you just pushed an array with a value, using lastIndexOf remains probably the best solution, but if you have to travel through big arrays and the result could be everywhere, this could be a solid solution to make things faster.

Bidirectional indexOf/lastIndexOf

function bidirectionalIndexOf(a, b, c, d, e){
  for(c=a.length,d=c*1; c--; ){
    if(a[c]==b) return c; //or this[c]===b
    if(a[e=d-1-c]==b) return e; //or a[e=d-1-c]===b
  }
  return -1
}

//Usage
bidirectionalIndexOf(array,'value');

Performance test

http://jsperf.com/bidirectionalindexof

As test I created an array with 100k entries.

Three queries: at the beginning, in the middle & at the end of the array.

I hope you also find this interesting and test the performance.

Note: As you can see I slightly modified the contains function to reflect the indexOf & lastIndexOf output (so basically true with the index and false with -1). That shouldn't harm it.

The array prototype variant

Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype,'bidirectionalIndexOf',{value:function(b,c,d,e){
  for(c=this.length,d=c*1; c--; ){
    if(this[c]==b) return c; //or this[c]===b
    if(this[e=d-1-c] == b) return e; //or this[e=d-1-c]===b
  }
  return -1
},writable:false, enumerable:false});

// Usage
array.bidirectionalIndexOf('value');

The function can also be easily modified to return true or false or even the object, string or whatever it is.

And here is the while variant:

function bidirectionalIndexOf(a, b, c, d){
  c=a.length; d=c-1;
  while(c--){
    if(b===a[c]) return c;
    if(b===a[d-c]) return d-c;
  }
  return c
}

// Usage
bidirectionalIndexOf(array,'value');

How is this possible?

I think that the simple calculation to get the reflected index in an array is so simple that it's two times faster than doing an actual loop iteration.

Here is a complex example doing three checks per iteration, but this is only possible with a longer calculation which causes the slowdown of the code.

http://jsperf.com/bidirectionalindexof/2

If you are using JavaScript 1.6 or later (Firefox 1.5 or later) you can use Array.indexOf. Otherwise, I think you are going to end up with something similar to your original code.

If you are checking repeatedly for existence of an object in an array you should maybe look into

  1. Keeping the array sorted at all times by doing insertion sort in your array (put new objects in on the right place)
  2. Make updating objects as remove+sorted insert operation and
  3. Use a binary search lookup in your contains(a, obj).
function inArray(elem,array)
{
    var len = array.length;
    for(var i = 0 ; i < len;i++)
    {
        if(array[i] == elem){return i;}
    }
    return -1;
}

Returns array index if found, or -1 if not found

We use this snippet (works with objects, arrays, strings):

/*
 * @function
 * @name Object.prototype.inArray
 * @description Extend Object prototype within inArray function
 *
 * @param {mix}    needle       - Search-able needle
 * @param {bool}   searchInKey  - Search needle in keys?
 *
 */
Object.defineProperty(Object.prototype, 'inArray',{
    value: function(needle, searchInKey){

        var object = this;

        if( Object.prototype.toString.call(needle) === '[object Object]' || 
            Object.prototype.toString.call(needle) === '[object Array]'){
            needle = JSON.stringify(needle);
        }

        return Object.keys(object).some(function(key){

            var value = object[key];

            if( Object.prototype.toString.call(value) === '[object Object]' || 
                Object.prototype.toString.call(value) === '[object Array]'){
                value = JSON.stringify(value);
            }

            if(searchInKey){
                if(value === needle || key === needle){
                return true;
                }
            }else{
                if(value === needle){
                    return true;
                }
            }
        });
    },
    writable: true,
    configurable: true,
    enumerable: false
});

Usage:

var a = {one: "first", two: "second", foo: {three: "third"}};
a.inArray("first");          //true
a.inArray("foo");            //false
a.inArray("foo", true);      //true - search by keys
a.inArray({three: "third"}); //true

var b = ["one", "two", "three", "four", {foo: 'val'}];
b.inArray("one");         //true
b.inArray('foo');         //false
b.inArray({foo: 'val'})   //true
b.inArray("{foo: 'val'}") //false

var c = "String";
c.inArray("S");        //true
c.inArray("s");        //false
c.inArray("2", true);  //true
c.inArray("20", true); //false

Use lodash's some function.

It's concise, accurate and has great cross platform support.

The accepted answer does not even meet the requirements.

Requirements: Recommend most concise and efficient way to find out if a JavaScript array contains an object.

Accepted Answer:

$.inArray({'b': 2}, [{'a': 1}, {'b': 2}])
> -1

My recommendation:

_.some([{'a': 1}, {'b': 2}], {'b': 2})
> true

Notes:

$.inArray works fine for determining whether a scalar value exists in an array of scalars...

$.inArray(2, [1,2])
> 1

... but the question clearly asks for an efficient way to determine if an object is contained in an array.

In order to handle both scalars and objects, you could do this:

(_.isObject(item)) ? _.some(ary, item) : (_.indexOf(ary, item) > -1)

Solution that works in all modern browsers:

function contains(arr, obj) {
  const stringifiedObj = JSON.stringify(obj); // Cache our object to not call `JSON.stringify` on every iteration
  return arr.some(item => JSON.stringify(item) === stringifiedObj);
}

Usage:

contains([{a: 1}, {a: 2}], {a: 1}); // true

IE6+ solution:

function contains(arr, obj) {
  var stringifiedObj = JSON.stringify(obj)
  return arr.some(function (item) {
    return JSON.stringify(item) === stringifiedObj;
  });
}

// .some polyfill, not needed for IE9+
if (!('some' in Array.prototype)) {
  Array.prototype.some = function (tester, that /*opt*/) {
    for (var i = 0, n = this.length; i < n; i++) {
      if (i in this && tester.call(that, this[i], i, this)) return true;
    } return false;
  };
}

Usage:

contains([{a: 1}, {a: 2}], {a: 1}); // true

Why to use JSON.stringify?

Array.indexOf and Array.includes (as well as most of the answers here) only compare by reference and not by value.

[{a: 1}, {a: 2}].includes({a: 1});
// false, because {a: 1} is a new object

Bonus

Non-optimized ES6 one-liner:

[{a: 1}, {a: 2}].some(item => JSON.stringify(item) === JSON.stringify({a: 1));
// true

Note: Comparing objects by value will work better if the keys are in the same order, so to be safe you might sort the keys first with a package like this one: https://www.npmjs.com/package/sort-keys

Updated the contains function with a perf optimization. Thanks itinance for pointing it out.

While array.indexOf(x)!=-1 is the most concise way to do this (and has been supported by non-Internet Explorer browsers for over decade...), it is not O(1), but rather O(N), which is terrible. If your array will not be changing, you can convert your array to a hashtable, then do table[x]!==undefined or ===undefined:

Array.prototype.toTable = function() {
    var t = {};
    this.forEach(function(x){t[x]=true});
    return t;
}

Demo:

var toRemove = [2,4].toTable();
[1,2,3,4,5].filter(function(x){return toRemove[x]===undefined})

(Unfortunately, while you can create an Array.prototype.contains to "freeze" an array and store a hashtable in this._cache in two lines, this would give wrong results if you chose to edit your array later. JavaScript has insufficient hooks to let you keep this state, unlike Python for example.)

ECMAScript 6 has an elegant proposal on find.

The find method executes the callback function once for each element present in the array until it finds one where callback returns a true value. If such an element is found, find immediately returns the value of that element. Otherwise, find returns undefined. callback is invoked only for indexes of the array which have assigned values; it is not invoked for indexes which have been deleted or which have never been assigned values.

Here is the MDN documentation on that.

The find functionality works like this.

function isPrime(element, index, array) {
    var start = 2;
    while (start <= Math.sqrt(element)) {
        if (element % start++ < 1) return false;
    }
    return (element > 1);
}

console.log( [4, 6, 8, 12].find(isPrime) ); // Undefined, not found
console.log( [4, 5, 8, 12].find(isPrime) ); // 5

You can use this in ECMAScript 5 and below by defining the function.

if (!Array.prototype.find) {
  Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype, 'find', {
    enumerable: false,
    configurable: true,
    writable: true,
    value: function(predicate) {
      if (this == null) {
        throw new TypeError('Array.prototype.find called on null or undefined');
      }
      if (typeof predicate !== 'function') {
        throw new TypeError('predicate must be a function');
      }
      var list = Object(this);
      var length = list.length >>> 0;
      var thisArg = arguments[1];
      var value;

      for (var i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        if (i in list) {
          value = list[i];
          if (predicate.call(thisArg, value, i, list)) {
            return value;
          }
        }
      }
      return undefined;
    }
  });
}

Use:

var myArray = ['yellow', 'orange', 'red'] ;

alert(!!~myArray.indexOf('red')); //true

Demo

To know exactly what the tilde ~ do at this point, refer to this question What does a tilde do when it precedes an expression?.

Here's how Prototype does it:

/**
 *  Array#indexOf(item[, offset = 0]) -> Number
 *  - item (?): A value that may or may not be in the array.
 *  - offset (Number): The number of initial items to skip before beginning the
 *      search.
 *
 *  Returns the position of the first occurrence of `item` within the array &mdash; or
 *  `-1` if `item` doesn't exist in the array.
**/
function indexOf(item, i) {
  i || (i = 0);
  var length = this.length;
  if (i < 0) i = length + i;
  for (; i < length; i++)
    if (this[i] === item) return i;
  return -1;
}

Also see here for how they hook it up.

OK, you can just optimise your code to get the result!

There are many ways to do this which are cleaner and better, but I just wanted to get your pattern and apply to that using JSON.stringify, just simply do something like this in your case:

function contains(a, obj) {
    for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
        if (JSON.stringify(a[i]) === JSON.stringify(obj)) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

Use:

Array.prototype.contains = function(x){
  var retVal = -1;

  // x is a primitive type
  if(["string","number"].indexOf(typeof x)>=0 ){ retVal = this.indexOf(x);}

  // x is a function
  else if(typeof x =="function") for(var ix in this){
    if((this[ix]+"")==(x+"")) retVal = ix;
  }

  //x is an object...
  else {
    var sx=JSON.stringify(x);
    for(var ix in this){
      if(typeof this[ix] =="object" && JSON.stringify(this[ix])==sx) retVal = ix;
    }
  }

  //Return False if -1 else number if numeric otherwise string
  return (retVal === -1)?false : ( isNaN(+retVal) ? retVal : +retVal);
}

I know it's not the best way to go, but since there is no native IComparable way to interact between objects, I guess this is as close as you can get to compare two entities in an array. Also, extending Array object might not be a wise thing to do, but sometimes it's OK (if you are aware of it and the trade-off).

One can use Set that has the method "has()":

function contains(arr, obj) {
  var proxy = new Set(arr);
  if (proxy.has(obj))
    return true;
  else
    return false;
}

var arr = ['Happy', 'New', 'Year'];
console.log(contains(arr, 'Happy'));

You can also use this trick:

var arrayContains = function(object) {
  return (serverList.filter(function(currentObject) {
    if (currentObject === object) {
      return currentObject
    }
    else {
      return false;
    }
  }).length > 0) ? true : false
}
  1. Either use Array.indexOf(Object).
  2. With ECMA 7 one can use the Array.includes(Object).

  3. With ECMA 6 you can use Array.find(FunctionName) where FunctionName is a user defined function to search for the object in the array.

    Hope this helps!

Similar thing: Finds the first element by a "search lambda":

Array.prototype.find = function(search_lambda) {
  return this[this.map(search_lambda).indexOf(true)];
};

Usage:

[1,3,4,5,8,3,5].find(function(item) { return item % 2 == 0 })
=> 4

Same in coffeescript:

Array.prototype.find = (search_lambda) -> @[@map(search_lambda).indexOf(true)]
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