Question

I’ve written a live filter in javascript that takes a value from a field and hides the rows in a table that do not match.

The RegEx I use for this is very simple: /inputValue/i

Although this works great it only matches characters that are in order. For example:

inputValue = test
string to match = this is a test sentence

This example would match, but if I tried:

inputValue = this sentence
string to match = this is a test sentence

This won’t match because the input value is out of order.

How would I go about writing a RegEx that is in order but can skip words?

Here is the loop I currently use:

for (var i=0; i < liveFilterDataArray.length; i++) {

  var comparisonString = liveFilterDataArray[i],
    comparisonString = comparisonString.replace(/['";:,.\/?\\-]/g, '');

  RE = eval("/" + liveFilterValue + "/i");

  if (comparisonString.match(RE)) {
    rowsToShow.push(currentRow);
  }
  if(currentRow < liveFilterGridRows.length - 1) {
    currentRow++;
  } else {
    currentRow = 0;
  }
}

Many thanks for your time.

Chris

Answer 1

It is recommended to Use RegExp instead of eval.

DEMO

var words = liveFilterValue.split(" ");
var searchArg = (words.length==1)?words:words.join(".*")+'|'+words.reverse().join(".*")
var RE = new RegExp(searchArg,"i");

It will create this.*sentence|sentence.*this/i

remove +'|'+words.reverse().join(".*") if you only want to find this.....sentence and not sentence....this