Simple Nodejs Regex: Extract text from between two strings

Question

I'm trying to extract the Vine ID from the following URL:

https://vine.co/v/Mipm1LMKVqJ/embed

I'm using this regex:

/v/(.*)/

and testing it here: http://regexpal.com/

...but it's matching the V and closing "/". How can I just get "Mipm1LMKVqJ", and what would be the cleanest way to do this in Node?

Although you should not use regex, it works fine and you need to reference group index 1 to get the match result. — hwnd
– hwnd, Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 1:15
As for your regex, you should make the * non greedy, so (.*?). And like hwnd said, grab the sub-group. — cookie monster
– cookie monster, Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 1:16
s = s.slice(s.indexOf("/v/") + 3); s.slice(0, s.indexOf("/")); I had my indices mixed up on the first version. — cookie monster
– cookie monster, Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 1:21

hwnd · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-22 01:53:05Z

17

You need to reference the first match group in order to print the match result only.

var re = new RegExp('/v/(.*)/');
var r  = 'https://vine.co/v/Mipm1LMKVqJ/embed'.match(re);
if (r)
    console.log(r[1]); //=> "Mipm1LMKVqJ"

Note: If the url often change, I recommend using *? to prevent greediness in your match.

Although from the following url, maybe consider splitting.

var r = 'https://vine.co/v/Mipm1LMKVqJ/embed'.split('/')[4]
console.log(r); //=> "Mipm1LMKVqJ"

answered Sep 22, 2014 at 1:26

hwnd

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