create keypair object from extended object javascript

Question

I've got a regex like this:

    var regex = /(\d\d\/\d\d\/\d\d) (\d\d:\d\d:\d\d): ([^:]+): (.*)/g;

this a regex to read the string below and divide it up into several object properties

    27/02/14 23:45:01: Tom: Ja

With a little help of the regex above, I'm creating an object via this code:

var match;
while( match = regex.exec(chat)) {
     messages.push({
    date: match[1],
    time: match[2],
    name: match[3],
    message: match[4]
   });
}

Sometime the date doesn't look like dd/mm/yy but rather like dd-mm-yyyy or dd-mm-yy.

Whichever is the good match I want to parse that into the date property. but when adding multiple regex to match[1] the code seems to fail.

So what are you asking for? An expression that matches dd/mm/yy, dd-mm-yyyy and dd-mm-yy? — Felix Kling
– Felix Kling, Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 21:12

Josh Beam · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-01 21:17:45Z

3

If I understand correctly, your code works when the date is always formatted the same, and you want to be able to accept different formats of dates.

Try this:

var regex = /(\d\d[\/-]\d\d[\/-]\d{2,4}) (\d\d:\d\d:\d\d): ([^:]+): (.*)/g;

The above regular expression should accept either a forward slash or dash (by saying [\/-]), and then for the year, accept 2 or 4 digits (by saying \d{2,4}).

Edit

A commenter below made a good suggestion. If you want to make sure the delimiter is the same in both cases, you can do this instead:

var regex = /(\d\d([\/-])\d\d\2\d{2,4}) (\d\d:\d\d:\d\d): ([^:]+): (.*)/g;

Just take note, though, that the first delimiter is now a match, so you'll have to adjust your code that creates your object. match[2] will now be the delimiter, so you'll have to do something like this:

var match;
while( match = regex.exec(chat)) {
    messages.push({
        date: match[1],
        time: match[3],
        name: match[4],
        message: match[5]
   });
}

edited Mar 1, 2014 at 21:17

answered Mar 1, 2014 at 21:11

Josh Beam

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2 Comments

Felix Kling Over a year ago

Technically this would match dd/mm-yy as well (even though such input is probably very unlikely). To match the same delimiter in both cases, you could use a capture group and a backreference instead: (\d\d([\/-])\d\d\2\d{2,4}) (but then the rest of the code would have to be adjusted as well).

user3263723 Over a year ago

I don't know if it's the regex, but this seems to return an empty array. If the date format is dd/mm/yy it does return a proper one.

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