How do I check if a string contains another string in Swift?

Question

In Objective-C the code to check for a substring in an NSString is:

NSString *string = @\"hello Swift\";
NSRange textRange =[strin         


        

Answer 1

You can do exactly the same call with Swift:

Swift 4 & Swift 5

In Swift 4 String is a collection of Character values, it wasn't like this in Swift 2 and 3, so you can use this more concise code¹:

let string = "hello Swift"
if string.contains("Swift") {
    print("exists")
}

Swift 3.0+

var string = "hello Swift"

if string.range(of:"Swift") != nil { 
    print("exists")
}

// alternative: not case sensitive
if string.lowercased().range(of:"swift") != nil {
    print("exists")
}

Older Swift

var string = "hello Swift"

if string.rangeOfString("Swift") != nil{ 
    println("exists")
}

// alternative: not case sensitive
if string.lowercaseString.rangeOfString("swift") != nil {
    println("exists")
}

I hope this is a helpful solution since some people, including me, encountered some strange problems by calling containsString().¹

PS. Don't forget to import Foundation

Footnotes

1. Just remember that using collection functions on Strings has some edge cases which can give you unexpected results, e. g. when dealing with emojis or other grapheme clusters like accented letters.

Answer 2

Here is my first stab at this in the swift playground. I extend String by providing two new functions (contains and containsIgnoreCase)

extension String {
    func contains(other: String) -> Bool{
        var start = startIndex

        do{
            var subString = self[Range(start: start++, end: endIndex)]
            if subString.hasPrefix(other){
                return true
            }

        }while start != endIndex

        return false
    }

    func containsIgnoreCase(other: String) -> Bool{
        var start = startIndex

        do{
            var subString = self[Range(start: start++, end: endIndex)].lowercaseString
            if subString.hasPrefix(other.lowercaseString){
                return true
            }

        }while start != endIndex

        return false
    }
}

Use it like this

var sentence = "This is a test sentence"
sentence.contains("this")  //returns false
sentence.contains("This")  //returns true
sentence.containsIgnoreCase("this")  //returns true

"This is another test sentence".contains(" test ")    //returns true

I'd welcome any feedback :)

Answer 3

Swift 4 way to check for substrings, including the necessary Foundation (or UIKit) framework import:

import Foundation // or UIKit

let str = "Oh Canada!"

str.contains("Can") // returns true

str.contains("can") // returns false

str.lowercased().contains("can") // case-insensitive, returns true

Unless Foundation (or UIKit) framework is imported, str.contains("Can") will give a compiler error.

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This answer is regurgitating manojlds's answer, which is completely correct. I have no idea why so many answers go through so much trouble to recreate Foundation's String.contains(subString: String) method.