Is there a specific perl regular expression that can accurately identify a javascript associative array?

Looking for a way to parse JavaScript code using Perl?

var materials ={
    foo: "bar",
    bar: "baz",
    baz: "foo"
},

If you have the JavaScript variable as a string and need to extract the associative array's body for JSON parsing in Perl, you might be struggling with your regular expression:

my ($json_str) = $js_code =~ m/var\smaterials\s=\s+({.+}),/i;

However, the $json_str remains uninitialized.

Answer №1

By extracting the JSON string from the JavaScript code using a regular expression, we can avoid issues with <code>. not matching \n by default. To address this, we can either use [\s\S] or enable the DOTALL flag with (?s).

For a demonstration, you can check out the following links:

https://regex101.com/r/pT8uR7/3

or

https://regex101.com/r/pT8uR7/4

Answer №2

If you're looking to extract the keys from a JSON object programmatically, consider utilizing JSON::Decode::Regexp which provides a regex pattern for matching JSON strings in Perl. This module not only matches the JSON but also loads it into a Perl hash for further processing. Here's an example of how to use it:

use Data::Dump;
use JSON::Decode::Regexp;

my $json_data = <<'END_JSON';
var items ={
    "apple": "red",
    "banana": "yellow",
    "grape": "purple"
},
END_JSON

if ($json_data =~ /(\{.+)/s) {
    local $_ = $1;
    local $^R;
    eval { /\A$JSON::Decode::Regexp::FROM_JSON/ } or die "No match";
    die "No match: $@" if $@;
    print "Match: "; dd $_;
}

The output will be:

Match: { apple => "red", banana => "yellow", grape => "purple" }

Answer №3

To exclude a group, using the syntax [^}]+ is effective even when dealing with multiple elements:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

my $js_code = <<'__END__';
var previousOne =  {
    pFoo: "pBar",
    pBar: "pBaz",
    pBaz: "pFoo"
},
var materials ={
    foo: "bar",
    bar: "baz",
    baz: "foo"
},
var anotherOne = {
   aFoo: "aBar",
   aBar: "aBaz",
   aBaz: "aFoo"
}
__END__

my ($json_str) = $js_code =~ m/\s*var\s+materials\s*=\s*({[^}]+}),?/;
print "json_str = ${json_str}\n";

Whitespace constraints have been relaxed for convenience. To test and modify the code online, you can visit the following link: here

Answer №4

Currently, there are no spaces between the equal sign and the curly bracket. However, in order to adhere to the pattern, at least one space is required. Consider removing the \s+ or replacing it with \s*.

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