Extracting `<key>:<value>` pairs with regex

Question

there is a textarea and want to extract with key:value (something like below image)

I have a regex but not working as expected

/([^\s][a-zA-Z!]+:(\s)?"?([a-z0-9\s.]+)"?[^ $])/gi

if the user enters the below string at that time regex break the group key:value.

is:"browser" browser: "chrome 11.11 V" node: error type:"Error"

expected group:

is:"browser"
browser: "chrome 11.11 V"
node: error 
type:"Error"

Answer 1

You can use

const text = 'is:"browser" browser: "chrome 11.11 V" node: error type:"Error"';
const re = /(\w+):\s*(?:"([^"]*)"|(\S+))/g;
let dict = {}, m;
while(m = re.exec(text)) {
  dict[m[1]]=(m[3] || m[2]);
}
console.log(dict);

// Or just get all matches:
console.log(text.match(re))

See the regex demo. Details:

• (\w+) - Group 1: one or more word chars
• : - a colon
• \s* - zero or more whitespaces
• (?:"([^"]*)"|(\S+)) - either of
  • "([^"]*)" - ", 0+ non-commas (captured in Group 2), "
  • | - or
  • (\S+) - Group 3: one or more non-whitespaces chars.