Flutter/Dart: Split string by first occurrence

Question

Is there a way to split a string by some symbol but only at first occurrence?

Example: date: '2019:04:01' should be split into date and '2019:04:01'
It could also look like this date:'2019:04:01' or this date : '2019:04:01' and should still be split into date and '2019:04:01'

string.split(':');

I tried using the split() method. But it doesn't have a limit attribute or something like that.

Answer 1

You were never going to be able to do all of that, including trimming whitespace, with the split command. You will have to do it yourself. Here's one way:

String s = "date   :   '2019:04:01'";
int idx = s.indexOf(":");
List parts = [s.substring(0,idx).trim(), s.substring(idx+1).trim()];

Answer 2

You can split the string, skip the first item of the list created and re-join them to a string.

In your case it would be something like:

var str = "date: '2019:04:01'";
var parts = str.split(':');
var prefix = parts[0].trim();                 // prefix: "date"
var date = parts.sublist(1).join(':').trim(); // date: "'2019:04:01'"

The trim methods remove any unneccessary whitespaces around the first colon.