How do I split a string, breaking at a particular character?

Question

I have this string

'john smith~123 Street~Apt 4~New York~NY~12345' 

Using JavaScript, what is the fastest way to parse this into

var name = "john smith"; var street= "123 Street"; //etc... 

Answer 1

With JavaScript’s String.prototype.split function:

var input = 'john smith~123 Street~Apt 4~New York~NY~12345';  var fields = input.split('~');  var name = fields[0]; var street = fields[1]; // etc. 

Answer 2

According to ECMAScript6 ES6, the clean way is destructuring arrays:

const input = 'john smith~123 Street~Apt 4~New York~NY~12345';    const [name, street, unit, city, state, zip] = input.split('~');    console.log(name); // john smith  console.log(street); // 123 Street  console.log(unit); // Apt 4  console.log(city); // New York  console.log(state); // NY  console.log(zip); // 12345

You may have extra items in the input string. In this case, you can use rest operator to get an array for the rest or just ignore them:

const input = 'john smith~123 Street~Apt 4~New York~NY~12345';    const [name, street, ...others] = input.split('~');    console.log(name); // john smith  console.log(street); // 123 Street  console.log(others); // ["Apt 4", "New York", "NY", "12345"]

I supposed a read-only reference for values and used the const declaration.

Enjoy ES6!