Question

I need to turn a string like this:

' query: "help me" distance: "25" count: "50" '

into a javascript object or json string that looks like this:

'{ query: "help me", distance: "25", count: "50" }'

Answer 1

Something like this, perhaps:

var query = ' query: "help me" distance: "25" count: "50"';
query = '{' + query.replace(/"(?=\s)/g, '",') + '}';
console.log(query);

With that lookahead expression I just put comma after all the double quotation marks that are followed by whitespace symbol.

Having said that, I’d strongly suggest reconsidering the method of constructing your params: somehow I feel you could get away with simple JSON.stringify-ing the params. It will be much more bulletproof – and easier to parse too.