Extract name and email from string in JS

Question

How can I extract the name and email from a string, where emails are separated by commas.

The regex below works great for individual emails, but not for emails within a string.

(?:"?([^"]*)"?\s)?(?:<?(.+@[^>]+)>?)

Note the comma within the name as well.

[email protected], John <[email protected]>, John D, A <[email protected]>, "John Doe , Yen" <[email protected]>

Output:

Name: null
Email: [email protected]

Name: John
Email: [email protected]

Name: John D, A
Email: [email protected]

Name: John Doe , Yen
Email: [email protected]

What's the output that you expect?

hwnd
– hwnd

2015-02-09 23:17:47 +00:00
Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 23:17 — hwnd
– hwnd, Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 23:17
Also had a try, see fiddle :)

Jonny 5
– Jonny 5

2015-02-10 00:11:44 +00:00
Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 0:11 — Jonny 5
– Jonny 5, Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 0:11

hwnd · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-09 23:56:48Z

3

It's hard to tell if the data will change or remain the same, but here's my attempt:

var re  = /(?:"?([A-Z][^<"]+)"?\s*)?<?([^>\s,]+)/g;

while (m = re.exec(str)) {
  if(m[1]) { m[1] = m[1].trim() }
  console.log("Name: "  + m[1]);
  console.log("Email: " + m[2]);
}

Working Demo

answered Feb 9, 2015 at 23:56

hwnd

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Comments

David Miani · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-09 23:56:18Z

Here is one possible answer:

(?:^|, *)(?![^",]+")(?:((?=[^"<]+@)|(?![^"<]+@)"?(?<name>[^"<]*)"? *))<?(?<email>[^,>]*)>?

This is using ruby regexes, and uses forward matches to determine if an entry has a name.

(?:^|, *): start at the front of the string, or after a , and a number of spaces
(?![^",]+"): negative lookahead, abort match if there are some characters and then a ". This stops commas from starting matches inside strings.
(?:((?=[^"<]+@)|(?![^"<]+@)"?(?<name>[^"<]*)"? *)): matching the name:
1. (?=[^"<]+@) if a @ occurs before a quote or open brace, it is just a email address without name, so do no match
2. (?![^"<]+@)"?(?<name>[^"<]*)"? *): otherwise, match the name (skipping the open and close quote if they are present
<?(?<email>[^,>]*)>?: match the email.

On rubular

Note that for a real job, this would be a terrible approach. The regex is near incomprehensible, not to mention fragile. It also isn't complete, eg what happens if you can escape quotes inside the name?

I would write a dedicated parser for this if you really need it. If you are just trying to extract some data though, the regex may be good enough.

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