Question

I’m building a simple filtering system, I simply want to add a string to an array and remove it if its already there on click of a link. I’ll try to explain the best I can..

$(document).ready(function(){
    //so I start with an empty array
    var filters [];
    //when a link is clicked I want to add it to the array..
    $('li a', context).click(function(e){
        //so I get the value held in the data-event attribute of the clicked item example: "john"
        newFilter = $(this).attr('data-event');
        //this is where I get stuck, I want to test to see if the string I now have
        //in 'newFilter' is in the array already or not.. if it is in the array I
        //want to remove it, but if it doesnt exist in the array i want to add it..
        if(jQuery.inArray(newFilter, filters){
            //add to array
        } else {
           //remove from array
        };
    e.preventDefault();
    });
});

Answer 1

$.inArray() returns the index of the item if it is found, and -1 otherwise (just like indexOf() does, when supported). Therefore, you can write something like:

var found = jQuery.inArray(newFilter, filters);
if (found >= 0) {
    // Element was found, remove it.
    filters.splice(found, 1);
} else {
    // Element was not found, add it.
    filters.push(newFilter);
}