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
– LS05, Commented Feb 22, 2017 at 9:34
@LS05 actually your idea turned out to be the best, worked great. thanks! :) — arslan
– arslan, Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 2:37
@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
– LS05, Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 10:51

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:46:16Z

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, 2017 at 11:46

CommunityBot

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answered Feb 22, 2017 at 9:36

Mr. Alien

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5 Comments

RaR Over a year ago

This removes , at the end of line. join(",\n") may help

arslan Over a year ago

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 Over a year ago

I added one more example. could you check it out please!

Mr. Alien Over a year ago

@alim You need to tweak your regex - jsfiddle.net/cc38s1a6/1 example, but you need to tweak that so it works with any types of quotes

Mr. Alien Over a year ago

@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

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:46:16Z

3

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, 2017 at 11:46

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Feb 22, 2017 at 9:34

Darin Dimitrov

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