How to check if a String contains an element from an array in Java

In this post, I will show a code snippet showing how to check if a String contains an element from an array in Java.

Java 8

If you can utilize Java 8, then follow the snippet below. In this snippet, we will use the Arrays API with Stream in parallel.

String[] items = {"po box", "P.O. Box"};
String address = "11627 Park St. po box 123, Ballico, CA, 95303";
boolean addressHasPOBox = Arrays.stream(items).parallel().anyMatch(address::contains);
		
System.out.println("The address has an item from the items array: " + addressHasPOBox);

Apache Commons

If you use StringUtils from Apache Commons

String[] items = {"po box", "P.O. Box"};
String address = "11627 Park St. po box 123, Ballico, CA, 95303";
boolean addressHasPOBox = StringUtils.indexOfAny(address, items);
		
System.out.println("The address has an item from the items array: " + addressHasPOBox);

Before than Java 8

If you cannot use Java 8, or Apache Commons, then we fallback to the classic and the most simple method to check if a String contains an element from an array:

String[] items = {"po box", "P.O. Box"};
String address = "11627 Park St. po box 123, Ballico, CA, 95303";
boolean addressHasPOBox = false;
		

for(String item: items) {
    if(address.contains(item)) {
        addressHasPOBox = true;
        break;
    }
}
   	
System.out.println("The address has an item from the items array: " + addressHasPOBox);