comparing variables for validate addMethod

Question

Ive been struggling with this all day, been close a couple times but nothing seems to work exactly.

I have a text input <input type="text" name="USA_sub" id="USA_sub" /> and after that an input <input type="text" name="FirstName" id="FirstName" /> I need to make sure (create a validation rule) that states "#FirstName" 's value must be contained in "#USA_sub" 's value.

I keep getting the error "$(sig).contains is not a function" with this:

$.validator.addMethod("FNESig", function (value, element) {
    var firstname = $("#FirstName").val();
    var sig = $("#USA_sub").val();

    if ($(sig).contains(firstname)) {
        return true;
    } else return false;
}, "Your First Name must be in your Electronic Signature.");

thx Kane

Answer 1

contains method in jQuery can only be applied to DOM elements. You may want to use indexOf javascript method instead. It will search for an occurrence of the specified value in a string

$.validator.addMethod("FNESig", function (value, element) {
    var firstname = $("#FirstName").val();
    var sig = $("#USA_sub").val();

    // means: does sig contains firstname?
    return (sig.indexOf(firstname) !== -1);

}, "Your First Name must be in your Electronic Signature.");

Answer 2

Try this:

if (sig.indexOf(firstname) >= 0) {
    return true;
} else return false;

Answer 3

Instead of this ($().contains() isn't a method...and you have a string, not a selector for a jQuery object, no need to wrap anything):

if ($(sig).contains(firstname)) {
    return true;
    } else return false;

You can just use string.indexOf(), like this:

return sig.indexOf(firstname) != -1; //-1 would mean it wasn't found

---

As a side note, since you're returning the same result as the condition, just return it, in other words this:

if(someCondition) {
  return true;
} else {
  return false;
}

Can just be:

return someCondition;