JavaScript Find Multiple Words with One Search
From Regex Regular Expression Encyclopedia
You can use this recipe for finding one of a list of words in a line. This recipe assumes both words are whole words surrounded by whitespace and that the list is a short one containing the words moo and oink.
[edit] code
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<form name="form1">
<input type="textbox" name="txtInput" />
<script type="text/javascript">
function validate() {
if (! document.form1.txtInput.value.match(/\s+(moo|oink)\s+/)) {
alert("Please enter valid value!")
} else {
alert("Success!")
}
}
</script>
<input type="button" name="btnSubmit" onclick="validate()" value="Go" />
</form>
</body>
</html>[edit] How It Works
A special character class, \b, allows you to easily search for whole words. This is an advantage because without doing a whole bunch of extra work you can make sure that a search for some- thing, for example, doesn’t yield unexpected matches such as somethings. You can break the regular expression shown here into the following:
| Regular Expression | Description |
|---|---|
| \s | whitespace . . . |
| + | found one or more times . . . |
| (...) | followed by something . . . |
| \s | followed by whitespace . . . |
| + | that occurs one or more times. |
| The something here is another expression, moo|oink. This expression is as follows: | |
| m | an m, followed by . . . |
| o | an o, then . . . |
| o | an o . . . |
| or... | |
| o | an o, followed by . . . |
| i | an i, then . . . |
| n | an n, followed by... |
| k | a k. |
[edit] Variations
A useful variation of this recipe is to replace the \s+ combination, which matches specifically whitespace, with the word boundary character class \b.
