Parsing odd string with Ruby

Question

An API responds with a string such as the following.

"\"APPROVED\"|\"222222\"|\"11111111\"|\"\"|\"M\"|\"\"|\"5454\"|\"MC\""

I was using the following code to parse

str = str.scan(/\w+/)

This worked fine, as I could str[0], str[1], etc..

Than a response such as

"\"DECLINED\"|\"\"|\"64243178\"|\"\"|\"\"|\"\"|\"Invalid Exp Date\"|\"\"|\"5454\"|\"MC\""

Trying to parse Invalid Exp Date ends up with simply

str[2] => Invalid

I tried the following

str.split("\"|")

But there is always a quote in the beginning

"Invalid Exp Date
"APPROVED

What is the best way to parse such a string?

It's not odd, it's just pipe-delimited values (like CSV with a | as a delimiter) — Mark Thomas
– Mark Thomas, Commented Aug 18, 2014 at 22:12
When you include an example in your question (which is generally helpful), it's a good idea to include your desired output, here ["APPROVED", "222222",..., "MC"], I assume. — Cary Swoveland
– Cary Swoveland, Commented Aug 18, 2014 at 22:39

mu is too short · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-19 15:36:47Z

4

I'd probably use the standard CSV parser for this, for example:

> s = "\"APPROVED\"|\"222222\"|\"11111111\"|\"\"|\"M\"|\"\"|\"5454\"|\"MC\""
> CSV.parse(s, :col_sep => '|')
 => [["APPROVED", "222222", "11111111", "", "M", "", "5454", "MC"]]

CSV covers more than just Comma Separated Values, a pipe is just as good a separator as a comma.

edited Aug 19, 2014 at 15:36

answered Aug 18, 2014 at 21:41

mu is too short

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Comments

Cary Swoveland · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-18 22:20:28Z

0

This is a straightfoward solution using String#gsub and String#split:

s = "\"APPROVED\"|\"222222\"|\"11111111\"|\"\"|\"M\"|\"\"|\"5454\"|\"MC\""

s.gsub('"','').split('|')
  #=> ["APPROVED", "222222", "11111111", "", "M", "", "5454", "MC"]

answered Aug 18, 2014 at 22:20

Cary Swoveland

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1 Comment

Dubb Over a year ago

That's actually more of what I was looking for.

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