Regex to replace only some / characters inside strings

Question

How to get regex with replace method? In my case I've got string which uses char / between.

input:

var string = "cn/" + companyName + "/st/" + state + "/ic/" + incCi + "/pr/" + priority + "/es/" + emplSystem + "/mc/" + mainCategory + "/sc/" + subCategory + "/ty/" + type;

output:

"cn/Nemesis Group/st/2/ic/null/pr/1 - High/es/null/mc/Add/Button/sc/Core/Label/ty/str"

variable mainCategory and subCategory returns string 'Add/Button' and 'Core/Label'

How to replace 'Add/Button' to 'Add%2FButton' and 'Core/Label' to 'Core%2FLabel' without changing any other char?

string.replace("\/", "%2F")

will change all char / to %2F

You need to do the replacement on the source strings `mainCategory` and `subCategory`, not on the final string. — Peter B, Feb 03 '21 at 11:39

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 03 '21 at 11:42

You can use encodeURIComponent() and decodeURIComponent() to transform this String

Example:

const companyName = "Company",
  state = "State",
  incCi = "IncCi",
  priority = "Priority",
  emplSystem = "EmplSystem",
  mainCategory = 'Add/Button',
  subCategory = 'Core/Label',
  type = "Type";

var string = "cn/" + companyName + "/st/" + state + "/ic/" + incCi + "/pr/" + priority + "/es/" + emplSystem +
  "/mc/" + encodeURIComponent(mainCategory) +
  "/sc/" + encodeURIComponent(subCategory) + "/ty/" + type;

console.log(string)

kks21199 · Answer 2 · 2021-02-03T11:45:04.733

It sounds to me like you are looking to encode the url. You can use encodeURI in JS to encode a url.

let encodedURL = encodeURI(url);

You can read more about it here.

If you want to encode the string altogether without ignoring any domain related parts, you can us encodeURIComponent()

let encodedURL = encodeURIComponent(url);

You can read more about their differences here.

EDIT:

If you are not encoding a url and you just want to repalce / with %2F only in mainCategory and subCategory then you need to run the regex on the string itself before joining them.

var string = "cn/" + companyName + 
    "/st/" + state + 
    "/ic/" + incCi + 
    "/pr/" + priority + 
    "/es/" + emplSystem + 
    "/mc/" + mainCategory.replace("\/", "%2F")  +
     "/sc/" + subCategory.replace("\/", "%2F")  + 
    "/ty/" + type;

@mplungjan but that will encode all the characters, I thought OP only wanted to change '/'. — kks21199, Feb 03 '21 at 11:53
Sure, if there are OTHER special chars, but if not, the the encode will work too — mplungjan, Feb 03 '21 at 12:07

Regex to replace only some / characters inside strings

2 Answers2