Check input value against an array - backbone.js

Question

I am using this plugin for my autocomplete form:
http://www.planbox.com/blog/news/updates/jquery-autocomplete-plugin-for-backbone-js.html
Instead of checking only one item, as in the code below (if (inputVal == 'bakaxel')),
I would like to check the selected value against the entire collection
var collection = new Backbone.Collection([
{id:"AB", name:"Alberta"},
{id:"AD", name:"Album"},
{id:"BA", name:"barn"},
{id:"BC", name:"bak"},
{id:"BD", name:"baby"},
{id:"BE", name:"band"},
{id:"BF", name:"bakaxel"},
{id:"BG", name:"batteri"},
{id:"BH", name:"barbie"},
{id:"MB", name:"Manitoba"},
{id:"AP", name:"Armed Forces Pacific"}
]);
$('input.search').autocomplete({
collection: collection,
attr: 'name',
noCase: true,
ul_class: 'search_options tr_list',
ul_css: {'z-index':1234}
});
$('input.search').each(function(){
$(this).blur(function(){
var inputVal = $('input.search').val();
if (inputVal == 'bakaxel') {
$('#search_result_page').load('searchResult.html');
$('#searchPage').addClass('hidden');
}
});
});
I tried this, but I'd rather not create the ar array again, just use the backbone collection:
$('input.search').each(function(){
$(this).blur(function(){
var inputVal = $('input.search').val();
var ar = ["Alberta", "Album", "barn", "bak", "baby", "band", "bakaxel", "batteri", "barbie", "Manitoba", "Armed Forces Pacific"];
if (jQuery.inArray(inputVal, ar) != -1) {
$('#search_result_page').load('searchResult.html');
$('#searchPage').addClass('hidden');
}
});
});

Answer 1

Backbone proxies Underscore functions and most notably in your case http://underscorejs.org/#where
where _.where(list, properties)
Looks through each value in the list, returning an array of all the values that contain all of the
key-value pairs listed in properties.
Your test could be written as
var matches = collection.where({
name: inputVal
});
if (matches.length>0) {
...
}
Or as #mu suggested in the comments, you could just check the existence of the input with http://underscorejs.org/#find
var found = collection.find(function(model) {
return model.get('name') === inputVal
});
if (found) {
...
}