How to convert an array in a string to an array on Javascript?

Question

I'd like to convert an string containing an array to an array.

Here's the string :

var colors = "['#e6f0ff', '#000a1a' ,'#ffe680', '#ffcc00', '#ffd9b3']";

Here's the result I want (not a string anymore) :

var colorsArray = ['#e6f0ff', '#000a1a' ,'#ffe680', '#ffcc00', '#ffd9b3'];

The double quotes will always be on the beginning and on the end, so I found this code from another post but my string still remains as string...

colors.replace(/^"(.+(?="$))"$/, '1ドル');

How can I achieve this and what's the best practice ?

Answer 1

Using regex

var colors = "['#e6f0ff', '#000a1a' ,'#ffe680', '#ffcc00', '#ffd9b3']";
console.log(colors.match(/#....../g))
console.log(colors.match(/#[a-f0-9]{6}/g))

Answer 2

One way to do it is to use the String.match

colors.match(/(#[a-f0-9]{6})/g)

will return an array of colours

Answer 3

Replace single qoutes with double and use JSON.parse

var colorsArray = JSON.parse(colors.replace(/'/g,'"'))

• Yury Tarabanko: @charlietfl You can open console and run this code. After replacing single quotes with double it works.

Answer 4

If you trust the input is safe you can use eval()

var colors = "['#e6f0ff', '#000a1a' ,'#ffe680', '#ffcc00', '#ffd9b3']",
 colorsArray = eval(colors);
console.log('colorsArray is array = ', Array.isArray(colorsArray))