Split a text with a regular expression

Question

i try to slit a text and put it into a dictionary , the problem i my text doesn't have a a clear structure : text :

{
   "about": "where I'm meant to be...",
   "bio": "Visit my official blog at:\n\nhttp://ABC.com/  \n\nAdd me on Twitter:\n\nhttp://www.ABC.com/ABC",
   "category": "Public figure",
   "is_published": true,
   "location": {
      "street": "",
      "city": "Los Angeles",
      "state": "CA",
      "country": "United States",
      "zip": ""
   },
   "talking_about_count": 254637,
   "username": "ABC",
   "website": "http://kimkardashian.celebuzz.com/\nhttp://www.twitter.com/kimkardashian\n",
   "were_here_count": 0,
   "id": "114696805612",
   "name": "ABC",
   "link": "http://www.ABC.com/ABC",
   "likes": 0,
   "cover": {
      "cover_id": "000000000",
      "source": "http://ABC.jpg",
      "offset_y": 0,
      "offset_x": 200
   }
}

As you see i have the "," as a delimiter , the problem is that there some composed objects like the :

"location": {
      "street": "",
      "city": "Los Angeles",
      "state": "CA",
      "country": "United States",
      "zip": ""
   },

that's why I can't use the string.Split(' '); i heard about the regular expressions but I don't know how to use them Is there any solution to get those information separated into a dictionary or any other structure

it has a very clear structure you just need the right parser — Weyland Yutani, Oct 10 '13 at 16:32
that looks like JSON to me. you might want to try a JSON deserializer. I think c# has some built in — Sam I am says Reinstate Monica, Oct 10 '13 at 16:32
I will try this solution , i heard about it meanwhile, is there any other solution with the regular expression ? — user1863359, Oct 10 '13 at 16:36
[This Question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13605667/c-sharp-json-parsing) has a solution that might be useful to you — Sam I am says Reinstate Monica, Oct 10 '13 at 16:38
You should really look at JSON desirializer, it's very straight forward and you'll end up with a lot less code and less potential bugs. — the_lotus, Oct 10 '13 at 16:51

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 10 '13 at 17:01

Your data is in a standard format (JSON) and there are parsers already written for it. You can download Json.NET easy through NuGet in Visual Studio.

Regular expressions are a powerful tool that makes pattern matching a lot simpler. For me that's as far as they go. They can be used to create parsers and all sorts of other things, but it's complicated.

So you could create your own JSON parser using regular expressions, but it'll take a lot of time. It would be like building a lockpick when there is a key available.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 10 '13 at 17:00

JavaScriptSerializer may satisfy your needs

using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
var dict = jss.Deserialize<Dictionary<string,string>>(jsonText);
Console.WriteLine(dict["some_number"]);

See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.script.serialization.javascriptserializer.aspx

Split a text with a regular expression

2 Answers2