How to retrieve Name from Email Address

Question

With javascript, how do we remove the @gmail.com or @aol.com from a string so that what only remains is the name?

var string = "[email protected]"; 

Will be just "johdoe"? I tried with split but it did not end well. thanks.

Answer 1

var email = "[email protected]"; var name   = email.substring(0, email.lastIndexOf("@")); var domain = email.substring(email.lastIndexOf("@") +1);  console.log( name );   // john.doe console.log( domain ); // example.com 

The above will also work for valid names containing @ (tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3696^{Page 5}):

john@doe
"john@@".doe
"j@hn".d@e

• String.prototype.substring()
• String.prototype.lastIndexOf()

Using RegExp:

Given the email value is already validated, String.prototype.match() can be than used to retrieve the desired name, domain:

String match:

const name   = email.match(/^.+(?=@)/)[0];     const domain = email.match(/(?<=.+@)[^@]+$/)[0];  

Capturing Group:

const name   = email.match(/(.+)@/)[1];     const domain = email.match(/.+@(.+)/)[1]; 

To get both fragments in an Array, use String.prototype.split() to split the string at the last @ character:

const [name, domain] = email.split(/(?<=^.+)@(?=[^@]+$)/); console.log(name, domain); 

or simply with /@(?=[^@]*$)/.
Here's an example that uses a reusable function getEmailFragments( String )

const getEmailFragments = (email) => email.split(/@(?=[^@]*$)/);  [ // LIST OF VALID EMAILS:   `[email protected]`,   `john@[email protected]`,   `"john@@"[email protected]`,   `"j@hn".d@[email protected]`, ] .forEach(email => {   const [name, domain] = getEmailFragments(email);   console.log("DOMAIN: %s NAME: %s ", domain, name); });

Answer 2

You should take note that a valid email address is an incredibly sophisticated object and may contain multiple @ signs (ref. http://cr.yp.to/im/address.html).

"The domain part of an address is everything after the final @."

Thus, you should do something equivalent to:

var email = "[email protected]"; var name = email.substring(0, email.lastIndexOf("@")); 

or even shorter,

var name = email.replace(/@[^@]+$/, ''); 

If you want both the name and the domain/hostname, then this will work:

var email = "[email protected]"; var lasta = email.lastIndexOf('@'); var name, host; if (lasta != -1) {     name = email.substring(0, lasta);     host = email.substring(lasta+1);     /* automatically extends to end of string when 2nd arg omitted */ } else {     /* respond to invalid email in some way */ }