Question

I have a text file with multiple records each with a new line like below

username ="Test1" :[Jul 01 2012]
username ="Test2" :[Jul 03 2011]
username ="Test3" :[Jul 28 2011]
username ="Test4" :[Jul 12 2010]

How do I parse through this text with the above format and only store the data between the two square brackets? [] so the result returned would look like this.

Jul 01 2012
Jul 03 2011
Jul 28 2011
Jul 12 2010

I would like to use JavaScript only to accomplish this task.

Thank you in advance for any support!

Answer 1

Loop through each line, and parse out the data you want. RegExes should work well here.

Let’s say your string is in the variable myText:

var lines = myText.split("\n"),
    dates = [], tempVar;
for(var i = 0, len = lines.length; i < len; i++){
    tempVar = lines[i].match(/^.*:\[(\w{3} \d{2} \d{4})\]/);
    if(tempVar !== null){
        dates.push(tempVar[1]);
    }
}

DEMO: http://jsfiddle.net/Uqaj9/