Trying to extract variable names from paths (variable is preceded with : ,optionally enclosed by ()), the number of variables may vary
"foo/bar/:firstVar/:(secondVar)foo2/:thirdVar"
Expected output should be:
['firstVar', 'secondVar', 'thirdVar']
Tried something like
"foo/bar/:firstVar/:(secondVar)foo2/:thirdVar".match(/\:([^/:]\w+)/g)
but it doesnt work (somehow it captures colons & doesnt have optional enclosures), if there is some regex mage around, please help. Thanks a lot in advance!
var path = "foo/bar/:firstVar/:(secondVar)foo2/:thirdVar";
var matches = [];
path.replace(/:\(?(\w+)\)?/g, function(a, b){
matches.push(b)
});
matches; // ["firstVar", "secondVar", "thirdVar"]
What about this:
/\:\(?([A-Za-z0-9_\-]+)\)?/
matches:
:firstVar
:(secondVar)
:thirdVar
$1 contains:
firstVar
secondVar
thirdVar
May I recommend that you look into the URI template specification? It does exactly what you're trying to do, but more elegantly. I don't know of any current URI template parsers for JavaScript, since it's usually a server-side operation, but a minimal implementation would be trivial to write.
Essentially, instead of:
foo/bar/:firstVar/:(secondVar)foo2/:thirdVar
You use:
foo/bar/{firstVar}/{secondVar}foo2/{thirdVar}
Hopefully, it's pretty obvious why this format works better in the case of secondVar. Plus it has the added advantage of being a specification, albeit currently still a draft.
