Question

I’m parsing a document that has a known repeating structure. There is a heading (1 line), a sub-heading(1 line), and a content area (unknown # of lines).
The format for each item in the document is shown below:

 
=========================
       Head Text
=========================
      SubHead Text
=========================
 Content Text Line 1
 Content Text Line 2
 ...
 Content Text Line 8

I want to create an Array that contains an Object for each section.
Something like:

 var item = [];

 items[0] = {
     head: "head1 text",
     subHead: "subHead1 text",
     content: "content1 text"};
 items[1] = {
     head: "head2 text",
     subHead: "subHead2 text",
     content: "content2 text"};

I am having trouble efficiently traversing the document and dynamically adding each Object into the Array. I get an error under section 2 telling me that “page is null or not an object”.

 var count = 0;
 while( !stream.AtEndOfStream ){
 page[count] = stream.ReadLine();
 count++;
 }

var item = [{}];

var section = 0;

var i = 0, k = 0;
while (i < page.length) {
    if (~page[i].indexOf("=====")) {
        if(section == 0) {
            item[k].head = page[i+1];
            section++;
        } else      
        if (section == 1) {
            item[k].subHead1 = page[i+1];   
            section++;
            i++;
        } else
        if (section == 2) {
            var j = i+1;
            while(!~page[j].indexOf("=====")) {
                item[k].content += page[j] + "\n";
                j++;
            }   
                section = 0;
                k++;
        }       
    }
    i++;
}

Answer 1

Change this:

var item = [{}]; 

to this:

var item = []; 

Next, change this:

if (~page[i].indexOf("=====")) {  

to this:

if (~page[i].indexOf("=====")) { 
    item[k] = {};

I am not sure if that will work, but the basic idea is to create a blank array (var item = [];) and then add objects when needed (item[k] = {}). Previously you were trying to add properties to undefined objects.