I'm receiving a stringified Array of Objects in JS:
"[{version:07/18,test:true}]"
How can I get this back to an Array I can work with in JS? I've tried JSON.parse but this don't worked:
var abc = "[{version:07/18,test:true}]";
console.log(JSON.parse(abc));Thanks for helping me!
As the stringified Array of Objects you have isn't a valid JSON string, the JSON.* functions can't deal with it.
A solution is to create your own parser that deals with the type of strings you have and returns an array of objects created from those in the string.
I created a one for you :
/**
* a function designed to parse strings like the one you have
* it can deal with multiple objects in that string.
* @param arrLikeStr a string that as the one you have. Begins with "[" and ends with "]" and as much objects enclosed in "{" and "}" and separated with ",".
**/
const populateArrray = arrLikeStr => {
/** remove "[", "]" and spaces **/
arrLikeStr = arrLikeStr.replace(/[\[\]\s]/g, '');
/** split the string based on '},' to get the objects in that string and loop through them **/
return arrLikeStr.split('},').map(item => {
/** represents the current object (item) that is parsed **/
const obj = {};
/** remove "{" and "}" from the current item **/
/** split it based on "," and loop through **/
item.replace(/[{}]/g, '').split(',').forEach(key => {
/** split based on ":" to get the objects's attributes **/
key = key.split(':');
/** construct the object **/
/** "true" and "false" are represented as boolean true and false **/
obj[key[0]] = ['true', 'false'].indexOf(key[1]) !== -1 ? Boolean(key[1]) : key[1];
});
/** return the object after constructing it **/
return obj;
});
};
/** tests **/
const str = "[{version:07/18,test:true},{version:17/03,test:false}]",
arr = populateArrray(str);
/** print the whole parsed array **/
console.log(arr);
/** print the second object in the parsed array **/
console.log('second object:');
console.log(arr[1]);
/** print the version of the first object in the parsed array **/
console.log('first object version:');
console.log(arr[0].version);.as-console-wrapper {
min-height: 100%;
}If you can't fix the source you aren't left with any great options. You could use a library such as relaxed-json to parse JSON with missing quotes on keys, but it doesn't handle the 07/18 so you will need to quote that first.
const str = "[{version:07/18,test:true}]";
// Quote strings in the format 07/18:
const quoted = str.replace( /\d+\/\d+/g, '"$&"' );
// Parse with relaxed-json
const result = RJSON.parse( quoted );
console.log( result[0].version );
console.log( result );<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/relaxed-json.min.js"></script>This is fragile code, that might work now for what you need, but will stop working if the source ever includes any other weird values that don't match the \d+/\d+ pattern. I recommend that if you use something along these lines, you treat it as a temporary solution, and keep putting pressure on the maintainer of the data source to return their data as JSON.
hope this approach works with you
replace each , by },{ then convert the string into array using split method (",")
// original string : "[{version:07/18,test:true}]"
var arr;
abc = abc.replace("," , "},{"); // "[{version:07/18},{test:true}]"
arr = abc.split(","); // [{version:07/18},{test:true}]
then you can parse each element in the array alone
JSON.parse(arr[0]); // {version:07/18}
JSON.parse(arr[1]); // {test:true}
JSON.parsedidn't work because that isn't valid JSON. I'd say the issue worth solving is whatever is sending you data in such an awful format :)'[{"version":"07/18","test":true}]'.evalthis (boo hiss), it's still not right; e.g.{ version: 07/18 }will produce a giant decimal.