Ask Ben: Parsing CSV Strings With Javascript Exec() Regular Expression Command

code-1.htm

<script type="text/javascript">

	// This will parse a delimited string into an array of
	// arrays. The default delimiter is the comma, but this
	// can be overriden in the second argument.
	function CSVToArray( strData, strDelimiter ){
		// Check to see if the delimiter is defined. If not,
		// then default to comma.
		strDelimiter = (strDelimiter || ",");

		// Create a regular expression to parse the CSV values.
		var objPattern = new RegExp(
			(
				// Delimiters.
				"(\\" + strDelimiter + "|\\r?\\n|\\r|^)" +

				// Quoted fields.
				"(?:\"([^\"]*(?:\"\"[^\"]*)*)\"|" +

				// Standard fields.
				"([^\"\\" + strDelimiter + "\\r\\n]*))"
			),
			"gi"
			);


		// Create an array to hold our data. Give the array
		// a default empty first row.
		var arrData = [[]];

		// Create an array to hold our individual pattern
		// matching groups.
		var arrMatches = null;


		// Keep looping over the regular expression matches
		// until we can no longer find a match.
		while (arrMatches = objPattern.exec( strData )){

			// Get the delimiter that was found.
			var strMatchedDelimiter = arrMatches[ 1 ];

			// Check to see if the given delimiter has a length
			// (is not the start of string) and if it matches
			// field delimiter. If id does not, then we know
			// that this delimiter is a row delimiter.
			if (
				strMatchedDelimiter.length &&
				(strMatchedDelimiter != strDelimiter)
				){

				// Since we have reached a new row of data,
				// add an empty row to our data array.
				arrData.push( [] );

			}


			// Now that we have our delimiter out of the way,
			// let's check to see which kind of value we
			// captured (quoted or unquoted).
			if (arrMatches[ 2 ]){

				// We found a quoted value. When we capture
				// this value, unescape any double quotes.
				var strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 2 ].replace(
					new RegExp( "\"\"", "g" ),
					"\""
					);

			} else {

				// We found a non-quoted value.
				var strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 3 ];

			}


			// Now that we have our value string, let's add
			// it to the data array.
			arrData[ arrData.length - 1 ].push( strMatchedValue );
		}

		// Return the parsed data.
		return( arrData );
	}

</script>

code-2.htm

<form>

	<p>
		<input type="text" value="" size="40"
			onblur="console.log( CSVToArray( this.value, ' ' ) );"
			/>
	</p>

</form>

Hi! Can you please stick a license to this snippet? I'd like to reuse it. Thanks!

thanks for this - but +1 @djanowski, license please!

Was just looking for a license as well.

@bennadel - Could you add a license to the code?

I've added a general license page to my site: https://www.bennadel.com/blog/license.htm . The code in this gist was originally referenced here: https://www.bennadel.com/blog/1504-ask-ben-parsing-csv-strings-with-javascript-exec-regular-expression-command.htm