Javascript regex - how to get text between curly brackets

Question

Hi,

I need to get the text (if any) between curly brackets. I did find this other post but technically it wasn't answered correctly: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2403678/regular-expression-to-extract-text-between-either-square-or-curly-brackets

It didn't actually say how to actually extract the text. So I have got this far:

var cleanStr = "Some random {stuff} here";
var checkSep = "\{.*?\}"; 
if (cleanStr.search(checkSep)==-1) { //if match failed
  alert("nothing found between brackets");
} else {
  alert("something found between brackets");
}

How do I then extract 'stuff' from the string? And also if I take this further, how do I extract 'stuff' and 'sentence' from this string:

var cleanStr2 = "Some random {stuff} in this {sentence}";

Cheers!

Answer 1

To extract all occurrences between curly braces, you can make something like this:

function getWordsBetweenCurlies(str) {
  var results = [], re = /{([^}]+)}/g, text;

  while(text = re.exec(str)) {
    results.push(text[1]);
  }
  return results;
}

getWordsBetweenCurlies("Some random {stuff} in this {sentence}");
// returns ["stuff", "sentence"]

Answer 2

Create a "capturing group" to indicate the text you want. Use the String.replace() function to replace the entire string with just the back reference to the capture group. You're left with the text you want.