Question

I have a page where I want to see if a certain value exists in one of the arrays I have defined, there is one main array and several “sub” arrays, they are defined like this:

var main = ['header', 'firstname', 'surname', 'tel'];
var firstname_label = ['Hank', 'Dave', 'Erin', 'Jessica'];
var surname_label = ['Michaels', 'McHankering', 'Jameson', 'Lloydd', 'Eagon', 'Philips'];
var tel_label = ['mobile', 'landline'];

I want to check the sub arrays with a variable I have, I was thinking something along these lines:

for (i=1;i<=mainCount;i++)
{
    jQuery.inArray(var_x, main[i]_label)
}

Is something like this possible?

Answer 1

Try using an Object:

var main = ['header', 'firstname', 'surname', 'tel'];

var sub =
{
    firstname_label: ['Hank', 'Dave', 'Erin', 'Jessica'],
    surname_label: ['Michaels', 'McHankering', 'Jameson', 'Lloydd', 'Eagon', 'Philips'],
    tel_label: ['mobile', 'landline']
};

for (i=1;i<=mainCount;i++)
{
    jQuery.inArray(var_x, sub[main[i] + '_label'])
}

The alternative would be to use eval to select the variable name, but don’t go there.