Regex is so confusing to me. Can someone explain how to parse this url, so that I just get the number 7?
'/week/7'
var weekPath = window.location/path = '/week/7';
weekPath.replace(/week/,""); // trying to replace week but still left with //7/
asked Dec 21, 2015 at 18:51
Michael Joseph Aubry
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4 Answers
Fixing your regex:
Add \/ to your regex as below. This will capture the / before and after the string week.
var weekPath = '/week/7';
var newString = weekPath.replace(/\/week\//,"");
console.dir(newString); // "7"Alternative solution with
.match():To grab just the number at the end of the string with regex:
var weekPath = '/week/7';
var myNumber = weekPath.match(/\d+$/);// \d captures a number and + is for capturing 1 or more occurrences of the numbers
console.dir(myNumber[0]); // "7"Read up:
Comments
Place it as string and not regex
weekPath.replace("/week/","");
=> "7"
Difference ?
When the the string is delimited with / /, then the string is taken as a regex pattern, which will only replace week for you.
But when delimited by " ", it is taken as raw string, /week/
Comments
weekPath.replace(/week/,""); // trying to replace week but still left with //7/
Here you matched the characters week and replaced them, however your pattern doesn't match the slash characters. The two slashes in your source code are simply part of the syntax in JavaScript for creating a regex object.
Instead:
weekPath = weekPath.replace(/\/week\//, "");
Comments
You don't need to use regex for this. You can just get the pathname and split on the '/' character.
Assuming the url is http://localhost.com/week/7:
var path = window.location.pathname.split('/');
var num = path[1]; //7
'/week/7'.split('/')[2]