Searching for text inside nested object (Backbone.js collection as example)

backbone.js, full-text-search, javascript, jquery, underscore.js

Solution

Backbone extends a lot of the underscore methods into the `Collection` class so you can get rid of some of that stuff. Really you probably want to impliment this on the collection itself as a method, then I would probably look at those keys using a good old fashioned `for` loop, especially if I wanted to break out of it.

// in Backbone.Collection.extend
search: function( query, callback ){
  var pattern = new RegExp( $.trim( query ).replace( / /gi, '|' ), "i");
  var collection = this;
  collection.each(function(model) {
      for( k in model.attributes ){
        if( model.attributes.hasOwnProperty(k) && pattern.test(model.attributes[k]) ){ 
          callback.call( collection, model, k ); 
          break; // ends the for loop.
        }
      }
  });

}

// later
collection.search('foo', function( model, attr ){
  console.log('found foo in '+model.cid+' attribute '+attr);
});

That said, this would only ever return the first match from the collection. You may prefer an implementation that returns an array of results as [model, attribute] pairs.

// in Backbone.Collection.extend
search: function( query, callback ){
  var matches = [];
  var pattern = new RegExp( $.trim( query ).replace( / /gi, '|' ), "i");
  this.each(function(model) {
      for( k in model.attributes ){
        if( model.attributes.hasOwnProperty(k) && pattern.test(model.attributes[k]) ){ 
          matches.push([model, k]);
        }
      }
  });
  callback.call( this, matches );
}

// later
collection.search('foo', function( matches ){
  _.each(matches, function(match){
    console.log('found foo in '+match[0].cid+' attribute '+match[1]);
  });
});

Or, if you wanted an array of models which matched but don't care which attribute matched you can use `filter`

// in Backbone.Collection.extend
search: function( query, callback ){
  var pattern = new RegExp( $.trim( query ).replace( / /gi, '|' ), "i");
  callback.call( this, this.filter(function( model ){ 
    for( k in model.attributes ){ 
      if( model.attributes.hasOwnProperty(k) && pattern.test(k) ) 
        return true;
    }
  }));
}

// later
collection.search('foo', function( matches ){
  _.each(matches, function(match){
    console.log('found foo in '+match[0].cid+' somewhere');
  });
});

Problem

I have a backbone.js collection where I need to do a fulltextsearch on. The tools I have at hand are the following: Backbone.js, underscore.js, jQuery For those not familiar with backbone: A backbones collection is just an object. Inside the collection there is an array with models. Each model has an array with attributes. I have to search each attribute for a string. The code I am using for this is: ``` query = 'some user input'; query = $.trim(query); query = query.replace(/ /gi, '|'); var pattern = new RegExp(query, "i"); // this.collection.forEach is the same as _.each // only it get's the models from the collection this.collection.forEach(function(model) { var check = true; _.each(model.attributes, function(attr){ if(pattern.test(attr) && check){ // Do something with the matched item check = false; } }, this); }, this); ``` Maybe one of the tools I am using has a better way of dealing with this ?

Original source