CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby
Dubb
Dubb

Reputation: 45

Parsing odd string with Ruby

An API responds with a string such as the following.

"\"APPROVED\"|\"222222\"|\"11111111\"|\"\"|\"M\"|\"\"|\"5454\"|\"MC\""

I was using the following code to parse

str = str.scan(/\w+/)

This worked fine, as I could str[0], str[1], etc..

Than a response such as

"\"DECLINED\"|\"\"|\"64243178\"|\"\"|\"\"|\"\"|\"Invalid Exp Date\"|\"\"|\"5454\"|\"MC\""

Trying to parse Invalid Exp Date ends up with simply

str[2] => Invalid

I tried the following

str.split("\"|")

But there is always a quote in the beginning

"Invalid Exp Date
"APPROVED

What is the best way to parse such a string?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 61

Answers (2)

mu is too short
mu is too short

Reputation: 434585

I'd probably use the standard CSV parser for this, for example:

> s = "\"APPROVED\"|\"222222\"|\"11111111\"|\"\"|\"M\"|\"\"|\"5454\"|\"MC\""
> CSV.parse(s, :col_sep => '|')
 => [["APPROVED", "222222", "11111111", "", "M", "", "5454", "MC"]]

CSV covers more than just Comma Separated Values, a pipe is just as good a separator as a comma.

Upvotes: 4

Cary Swoveland
Cary Swoveland

Reputation: 110665

This is a straightfoward solution using String#gsub and String#split:

s = "\"APPROVED\"|\"222222\"|\"11111111\"|\"\"|\"M\"|\"\"|\"5454\"|\"MC\""

s.gsub('"','').split('|')
  #=> ["APPROVED", "222222", "11111111", "", "M", "", "5454", "MC"]

Upvotes: 0

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