[javascript] How to check whether a string contains a substring in JavaScript?

Usually I would expect a String.contains() method, but there doesn't seem to be one.

What is a reasonable way to check for this?

There is a String.prototype.includes in ES6:

"potato".includes("to");
> true

Note that this does not work in Internet Explorer or some other old browsers with no or incomplete ES6 support. To make it work in old browsers, you may wish to use a transpiler like Babel, a shim library like es6-shim, or this polyfill from MDN:

if (!String.prototype.includes) {
  String.prototype.includes = function(search, start) {
    'use strict';
    if (typeof start !== 'number') {
      start = 0;
    }

    if (start + search.length > this.length) {
      return false;
    } else {
      return this.indexOf(search, start) !== -1;
    }
  };
}

Another alternative is KMP (Knuth–Morris–Pratt).

The KMP algorithm searches for a length-m substring in a length-n string in worst-case O(n+m) time, compared to a worst-case of O(n·m) for the naive algorithm, so using KMP may be reasonable if you care about worst-case time complexity.

Here's a JavaScript implementation by Project Nayuki, taken from https://www.nayuki.io/res/knuth-morris-pratt-string-matching/kmp-string-matcher.js:

// Searches for the given pattern string in the given text string using the Knuth-Morris-Pratt string matching algorithm.
// If the pattern is found, this returns the index of the start of the earliest match in 'text'. Otherwise -1 is returned.

function kmpSearch(pattern, text) {_x000D_
  if (pattern.length == 0)_x000D_
    return 0; // Immediate match_x000D_
_x000D_
  // Compute longest suffix-prefix table_x000D_
  var lsp = [0]; // Base case_x000D_
  for (var i = 1; i < pattern.length; i++) {_x000D_
    var j = lsp[i - 1]; // Start by assuming we're extending the previous LSP_x000D_
    while (j > 0 && pattern.charAt(i) != pattern.charAt(j))_x000D_
      j = lsp[j - 1];_x000D_
    if (pattern.charAt(i) == pattern.charAt(j))_x000D_
      j++;_x000D_
    lsp.push(j);_x000D_
  }_x000D_
_x000D_
  // Walk through text string_x000D_
  var j = 0; // Number of chars matched in pattern_x000D_
  for (var i = 0; i < text.length; i++) {_x000D_
    while (j > 0 && text.charAt(i) != pattern.charAt(j))_x000D_
      j = lsp[j - 1]; // Fall back in the pattern_x000D_
    if (text.charAt(i) == pattern.charAt(j)) {_x000D_
      j++; // Next char matched, increment position_x000D_
      if (j == pattern.length)_x000D_
        return i - (j - 1);_x000D_
    }_x000D_
  }_x000D_
  return -1; // Not found_x000D_
}_x000D_
_x000D_
console.log(kmpSearch('ays', 'haystack') != -1) // true_x000D_
console.log(kmpSearch('asdf', 'haystack') != -1) // false