Javascript replace not working with ampersand and defining a letter

Question

I have written a JSFiddle with the expected output and output my code is currently doing. The two different values must be parsed as either a colon or a semi-colon as I need to know what one line to parse in php is.

var data = "key=update.repositories&value=xime+mcsg+mcsg-maps&key=server.minPlayersToStart&value=12";
data.replace(/&v/g, ":v");
data.replace(/&k/g, ";k");

$(".encData").text(data);

Fiddle found here: http://jsfiddle.net/RS6xC/1/

Answer 1

string.replace() doesn't change the original variable, it returns a new value.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/replace

So you need to reassign the returned value of the replace() method to the original variable, such as like this:

var data = "key=update.repositories&value=xime+mcsg+mcsg-maps&key=server.minPlayersToStart&value=12";
data = data.replace(/&v/g, ":v");
data = data.replace(/&k/g, ";k");
$(".encData").text(data);

Answer 2

.replace returns a new string, it does not modify the existing string.

Use:

data=data.replace(/&v/g, ":v");
data=data.replace(/&k/g, ";k");