Elegant way to convert string of Array of Arrays into a Javascript array of arrays?

Question

I have an ajax request that returns a list of values like this:

"[-5, 5, 5], [-6, 15, 15], [7, 13, 12]"

I need it to be a javascript array with numbers:

[[-5, 5, 5], [-6, 15, 15], [7, 13, 12]]

I tried to replace the '[' and ']' for a '|' and then split by '|' and foreach item split by ',' and add them to an array, but this is not elegant at all.

Do you guys have any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can use JSON.parse() to convert that string into an array, as long as you wrap it in some brackets manually first:

var value = "[-5, 5, 5], [-6, 15, 15], [7, 13, 12]";
var json = JSON.parse("[" + value + "]");

console.log(json);

I would suggest correcting the output at the server if possible, though.

Answer 2

This solution is stupid in practice -- absolutely use JSON.parse as others have said -- but in the interest of having fun with regular expressions, here you go:

function getMatches(regexp, string) {
  var match, matches = [];
  while ((match = regexp.exec(string)) !== null)
    matches.push(match[0]);
  return matches;
}

function parseIntArrays(string) {
  return getMatches(/\[[^\]]+\]/g, string)
    .map(function (string) {
      return getMatches(/\-?\d+/g, string)
        .map(function (string) { 
          return parseInt(string); 
        });
    });
}

parseIntArrays("[-5, 5, 5], [-6, 15, 15], [7, 13, 12]");