Develop Reference

 appearing in textarea elements but not in string

I am working on an autocomplete used inside a textarea. I know there is some autocompletes already created, but anyway.
It works well, but if when I'm typing something and I select one or many characters and delete it, a  appears at the end of my string (or where I was inside it). I tried to replace it while retrieving my html with replaceAll, but it doesn't work (There is not this special char when I use an indexOf). The problem is he doesn't find any result because of this char. Let's see an exemple :
This is my array (a little bit cut but we don't really care)
let array = [{
name: "test",
value: "I'm a test value"
},
{
name: "valueorange",
value: "I'm just an orange"
},
// This is how I get the contents of my span (I tried both innerHTML and innerText, same results).
// Same while using .text() or .html() with jquery
let value = jqElement.find("#searching-span")[0].innerHTML.substring(1).toLowerCase();
value = value.replaceAll(" ", " ");
value = value.replaceAll("", "");
I can replace every without any problems. Finally I check with a loop if there is some value with indexOf on each value, and if it returns anything I push it and get it in a new array. But when I have  I have no results.
Any idea how I can resolve it ?
I tried to be clear, I hope my english wasn't so bad, sorry if I made many mistakes !

Character entities and HTML escaped characters like and  appearing in HTML source code are converted by the HTML parser into unicode characters like \u00a0 and \ufeff before being inserted into the DOM.
If replacing them in JavaScript, use their unicode characters, not HTML escape sequences, to match them in DOM strings. For example:
p.textContent = p.textContent.replaceAll("\ufeff", '*'); // zwj
p.textContent = p.textContent.replaceAll("\xa0", '-'); // nbsp
<p id="p">   </p>
Note that zero width joiners are uses a lot in emoji character sequences and arbitrarily removing may break emoji character decoding (although decoding badly formed emoji strings is almost a prerequisite for handling emojis in the wild).
Second note: I am not suggesting this as a means of circumventing badly decoding characters that have been encoded using a Unicode Transform Format. Making sure decoding is performed correctly is always a better option.

Matching a JS string with regex

I have a long xml raw message that is being stored in a string format. A sample is as below.
<tag1>val</tag><tag2>val</tag2><tagSomeNameXYZ/>
I'm looking to search this string and find out if it contains an empty html tag such as <tagSomeNameXYZ/>. This thing is, the value of SomeName can change depending on context. I've tried using Str.match(/tagSomeNameXYZ/g) and Str.match(/<tag.*.XYZ\/>/g) to find out if it contains exactly that string, but am able to get it return anything. I'm having trouble in writing a reg ex that matches something like <tag*XYZ/>, where * is going to be SomeName (which I'm not interested in)
Tl;dr : How do I filter out <tagSomeNameXYZ/> from the string. Format being : <constant variableName constant/>
Example patterns that it should match:
<tagGetIndexXYZ/>
<tagGetAllIndexXYZ/>
<tagGetFooterXYZ/>

The issue you have with Str.match(/<tag.*.XYZ\/>/g) is the .* takes everything it sees and does not stop at the XYZ as you wish. So you need to find a way to stop (e.g. the [^/]* means keep taking until you find a /) and then work back from there (the slice).
Does this help
testString = "<tagGetIndexXYZ/>"
res = testString.match(/<tag([^/]*)\/\>/)[1].slice(0,-3)
console.log(res)

Regex: get string between last character occurence before a comma

I need some help with Regex.
I have this string: \\lorem\ipsum\dolor,\\sit\amet\conseteteur,\\sadipscing\elitr\sed\diam
and want to get the result: ["dolor", "conseteteur", "diam"]So in words the word between the last backslash and a comma or the end.
I've already figured out a working test, but because of reasons it won't work in neitherChrome (v44.0.2403.130) nor IE (v11.0.9600.17905) console.There i'm getting the result: ["\loremipsumdolor,", "\sitametconseteteur,", "\sadipscingelitrseddiam"]
Can you please tell me, why the online testers aren't working and how i can achieve the right result?
Thanks in advance.
PS: I've tested a few online regex testers with all the same result. (regex101.com, regexpal.com, debuggex.com, scriptular.com)

The string
'\\lorem\ipsum\dolor,\\sit\amet\conseteteur,\\sadipscing\elitr\sed\diam'
is getting escaped, if you try the following in the browser's console you'll see what happens:
var s = '\\lorem\ipsum\dolor,\\sit\amet\conseteteur,\\sadipscing\elitr\sed\diam'
console.log(s);
// prints '\loremipsumdolor,\sitametconseteteur,\sadipscingelitrseddiam'
To use your original string you have to add additional backslashes, otherwise it becomes a different one because it tries to escape anything followed by a single backslash.
The reason why it works in regexp testers is because they probably sanitize the input string to make sure it gets evaluated as-is.
Try this (added an extra \ for each of them):
str = '\\\\lorem\\ipsum\\dolor,\\\\sit\\amet\\conseteteur,\\\\sadipscing\\elitr\\sed\\diam'
re = /\\([^\\]*)(?:,|$)/g
str.match(re)
// should output ["\dolor,", "\conseteteur,", "\diam"]
UPDATE
You can't prevent the interpreter from escaping backslashes in string literals, but this functionality is coming with EcmaScript6 as String.raw
s = String.raw`\\lorem\ipsum\dolor,\\sit\amet\conseteteur,\\sadipscing\elitr\sed\diam`
Remember to use backticks instead of single quotes with String.raw.
It's working in latest Chrome, but I can't say for all other browsers, if they're moderately old, it probably isn't implemented.
Also, if you want to avoid matching the last backslash you need to:
remove the \\ at the start of your regexp
use + instead of * to avoid matching the line end (it will create an extra capture)
use a positive lookahead ?=
like this
s = String.raw`\\lorem\ipsum\dolor,\\sit\amet\conseteteur,\\sadipscing\elitr\sed\diam`;
re = /([^\\]+)(?=,|$)/g;
s.match(re);
// ["dolor", "conseteteur", "diam"]

You may try this,
string.match(/[^\\,]+(?=,|$)/gm);
DEMO

Parsing malformed JSON in JavaScript

Thanks for looking!
BACKGROUND
I am writing some front-end code that consumes a JSON service which is returning malformed JSON. Specifically, the keys are not surrounded with quotes:
{foo: "bar"}
I have NO CONTROL over the service, so I am correcting this like so:
var scrubbedJson = dirtyJson.replace(/(['"])?([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)(['"])?:/g, '"$2": ');
This gives me well formed JSON:
{"foo": "bar"}
Problem
However, when I call JSON.parse(scrubbedJson), I still get an error. I suspect it may be because the entire JSON string is surrounded in double quotes but I am not sure.
UPDATE
This has been solved--the above code works fine. I had a rogue single quote in the body of the JSON that was returned. I got that out of there and everything now parses. Thanks.
Any help would be appreciated.

You can avoid using a regexp altogether and still output a JavaScript object from a malformed JSON string (keys without quotes, single quotes, etc), using this simple trick:
var jsonify = (function(div){
return function(json){
div.setAttribute('onclick', 'this.__json__ = ' + json);
div.click();
return div.__json__;
}
})(document.createElement('div'));
// Let's say you had a string like '{ one: 1 }' (malformed, a key without quotes)
// jsonify('{ one: 1 }') will output a good ol' JS object ;)
Here's a demo: http://codepen.io/csuwldcat/pen/dfzsu (open your console)

something like this may help to repair the json ..
$str='{foo:"bar"}';
echo preg_replace('/({)([a-zA-Z0-9]+)(:)/','$1"$2"${3}',$str);
Output:
{"foo":"bar"}
EDIT:
var str='{foo:"bar"}';
str.replace(/({)([a-zA-Z0-9]+)(:)/,'$1"$2"$3')

There is a project that takes care of all kinds of invalid cases in JSON https://github.com/freethenation/durable-json-lint

I was trying to solve the same problem using a regEx in Javascript. I have an app written for Node.js to parse incoming JSON, but wanted a "relaxed" version of the parser (see following comments), since it is inconvenient to put quotes around every key (name). Here is my solution:
var objKeysRegex = /({|,)(?:\s*)(?:')?([A-Za-z_$\.][A-Za-z0-9_ \-\.$]*)(?:')?(?:\s*):/g;// look for object names
var newQuotedKeysString = originalString.replace(objKeysRegex, "$1\"$2\":");// all object names should be double quoted
var newObject = JSON.parse(newQuotedKeysString);
Here's a breakdown of the regEx:
({|,) looks for the beginning of the object, a { for flat objects or , for embedded objects.
(?:\s*) finds but does not remember white space
(?:')? finds but does not remember a single quote (to be replaced by a double quote later). There will be either zero or one of these.
([A-Za-z_$\.][A-Za-z0-9_ \-\.$]*) is the name (or key). Starts with any letter, underscore, $, or dot, followed by zero or more alpha-numeric characters or underscores or dashes or dots or $.
the last character : is what delimits the name of the object from the value.
Now we can use replace() with some dressing to get our newly quoted keys:
originalString.replace(objKeysRegex, "$1\"$2\":")
where the $1 is either { or , depending on whether the object was embedded in another object. \" adds a double quote. $2 is the name. \" another double quote. and finally : finishes it off.
Test it out with
{keyOne: "value1", $keyTwo: "value 2", key-3:{key4:18.34}}
output:
{"keyOne": "value1","$keyTwo": "value 2","key-3":{"key4":18.34}}
Some comments:
I have not tested this method for speed, but from what I gather by reading some of these entries is that using a regex is faster than eval()
For my application, I'm limiting the characters that names are allowed to have with ([A-Za-z_$\.][A-Za-z0-9_ \-\.$]*) for my 'relaxed' version JSON parser. If you wanted to allow more characters in names (you can do that and still be valid), you could instead use ([^'":]+) to mean anything other than double or single quotes or a colon. You can have all sorts of stuff in here with this expression, so be careful.
One shortcoming is that this method actually changes the original incoming data (but I think that's what you wanted?). You could program around that to mitigate this issue - depends on your needs and resources available.
Hope this helps.
-John L.

How about?
function fixJson(json) {
var tempString, tempJson, output;
tempString = JSON.stringify(json);
tempJson = JSON.parse(tempString);
output = JSON.stringify(tempJson);
return output;
}

Escaping raw, unescaped strings in bookmarklet

I’m trying to write a search engine bookmarklet (for Chrome), but I’m having trouble escaping the string.
For example if the search engine bookmarklet is the following:
javascript:alert("%s"); //%s is the search engine query, passed literally by chrome.
Then running it on the following string will give incorrect results:
c:\zebra
c:zebra instead of c:\zebra
If the character after the slash happens to be an actual escape character, then the results will vary depending on the character.
I’ve tried escaping and unescaping the string, I’ve tried reg-ex’ing it, and replacing the slash with a double-slash, but I cannot figure out a way to get this to work because the first time that the raw string enters the script, it is unescaped, and any operation after that will see it incorrectly.
How can this be handled correctly?

So far I can only make this work in chrome:
javascript: var str = (function(){STARTOFSTRING:/*%s*/ENDOFSTRING:;}).toString().match( /STARTOFSTRING:\/\*([\s\S]*)\*\/ENDOFSTRING:/ )[1]; alert(str);
writing c:\zebra will alert c:\zebra.
Firefox doesn't sustain the comments inside the function body when decompiled, unfortunately.
You also can't write the sequence */ in the string, but everything else should be passed literally, including quotes " ' etc