Converting an array in curly braces to a square bracketed array

Question

I've inherited a database that stores an array of strings in the following format:

{"First","Second","Third","Fourth"}

This is output as an ordered list in the application. We're replacing the front-end mobile app at the moment (ionic / angular) and want to do an ngFor over this array. In the first iteration, we did a quick and dirty replace on the curly brackets and then split the string on "," but would like to use a better method.

What is the best method for treating this type of string as an array?

Answer 1

You could do a string replacement of braces to brackets:

str.replace(/{(.*)}/, '[$1]')

This particular string could then be parsed as an array (via JSON.parse).

Answer 2

If you're looking to do the parsing to an array on the front end, would this work?:

 const oldStyle = '{"First","Second","Third","Fourth"}' const parseOldStyleToArray = input => input .replace(/[\\{\\}]/g, '') .split(',') .map(item => item.replace(/\\"/g, '')) const result = parseOldStyleToArray(oldStyle) console.dir(result) 

Answer 3

Another way to do more widest replacement by key:value mapping.

 str = '{"First","Second","Third","Fourth"}'; mapping = { '{': '[', '}': ']' } result = str.replace(/[{}]/g, m => mapping[m]); console.log(result);