node js, how to parse strings like this?

Question

I want to parse the following strings

3693,"Toxic Avenger, The (1985)",Comedy|Horror

to

3693,
"Toxic Avenger, The (1985)",
Comedy|Horror.

similarly, the following

161944,The Last Brickmaker in America (2001),Drama

should be parsed to

161944

The Last Brickmaker in America (2001)

Drama

I can't do it by splitting by comma, since there is a comma within " , ".

The worked solution: LS05 suggested me to use "substring", so I did it and it worked perfect. here it is.

    var pos1 = line.indexOf(',');
    var line = line.substring(pos1+1); 

    pos1 = line.indexOf(',');
    pos2 = line.lastIndexOf(',');

    let movie_id = line.substring(0,pos1);
    let movie_tag = line.substring(pos1+1,pos2);
    let movie_timespan = line.substring(pos2+1);

Thanks to LS05 :)

Maybe you can substring the first and the last part, so titles will remain — LS05, Feb 22 '17 at 09:34
@LS05 actually your idea turned out to be the best, worked great. thanks! :) — arslan, Feb 23 '17 at 02:37
@alim Good! Maybe you can show up the code (or the part that uses this strategy) just for reference on your process to the solution :) — LS05, Feb 23 '17 at 10:51

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

7

You can use regex to parse your string which will exclude commas which are inside quotes

var str = '3693,"Toxic Avenger, The (1985)",Comedy|Horror';
console.log(str.match(/(".*?"|[^",\s]+)(?=\s*,|\s*$)/g).join("\n"));

Demo (Refer to credits if you want to know how the above regex works)

As far as the code goes, I try to split your string ignoring the commas which are inside the string, and later we join the array items again using a new line character \n

^{Credits for Regex}

edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

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answered Feb 22 '17 at 09:36

Mr. Alien

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This removes `,` at the end of line. `join(",\n")` may help – RaR Feb 22 '17 at 09:37
it has a problem. can't parse this string '161944,The Last Brickmaker in America (2001),Drama'. removed the strings if there are no " ". – arslan Feb 22 '17 at 09:55
I added one more example. could you check it out please! – arslan Feb 22 '17 at 09:57
@alim You need to tweak your regex - https://jsfiddle.net/cc38s1a6/1/ example, but you need to tweak that so it works with any types of quotes – Mr. Alien Feb 22 '17 at 10:11
@alim Try this `console.log(str.match(/(["'].*?["']|[^",\s]+)(?=\s*,|\s*$)/g).join("\n"));` (not 100% sure though if it might break something else), this will accept single and double quoted strings – Mr. Alien Feb 22 '17 at 12:36

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

2

You could use a CSV parser such as papa parse or if you feel that a third party library is not needed you may take a look at this function.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

Community

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answered Feb 22 '17 at 09:34

Darin Dimitrov

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node js, how to parse strings like this?

2 Answers2