Replace multiple strings with multiple other strin

Question

I'm trying to replace multiple words in a string with multiple other words. The string is "I have a cat, a dog, and a goat."

However, this does not produce "I have a dog, a goat, and a cat", but instead it produces "I have a cat, a cat, and a cat". Is it possible to replace multiple strings with multiple other strings at the same time in JavaScript, so that the correct result will be produced?

var str = "I have a cat, a dog, and a goat.";
str = str.replace(/cat/gi, "dog");
str = str.replace(/dog/gi, "goat");
str = str.replace(/goat/gi, "cat");

//this produces "I have a cat, a cat, and a cat"
//but I wanted to produce the string "I have a dog, a goat, and a cat".

Answer 1

String.prototype.replaceSome = function() {
    var replaceWith = Array.prototype.pop.apply(arguments),
        i = 0,
        r = this,
        l = arguments.length;
    for (;i<l;i++) {
        r = r.replace(arguments[i],replaceWith);
    }
    return r;
}

/* replaceSome method for strings it takes as ,much arguments as we want and replaces all of them with the last argument we specified 2013 CopyRights saved for: Max Ahmed this is an example:

var string = "[hello i want to 'replace x' with eat]";
var replaced = string.replaceSome("]","[","'replace x' with","");
document.write(string + "<br>" + replaced); // returns hello i want to eat (without brackets)

*/

jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/CPj89/

Answer 2

With my replace-once package, you could do the following:

const replaceOnce = require('replace-once')

var str = 'I have a cat, a dog, and a goat.'
var find = ['cat', 'dog', 'goat']
var replace = ['dog', 'goat', 'cat']
replaceOnce(str, find, replace, 'gi')
//=> 'I have a dog, a goat, and a cat.'

Answer 3

Using Jquery Replace multiple strings with multiple other strings

     var replacetext = {
        "abc": "123",
        "def": "456"
        "ghi": "789"
    };

    $.each(replacetext, function(txtorig,txtnew) {
$(".eng-to-urd").each(function(){
$(this).text($(this).text().replace(txtorig, txtnew));
});
});

Answer 4

I wrote this npm package stringinject https://www.npmjs.com/package/stringinject which allows you to do the following

var string = stringInject("this is a {0} string for {1}", ["test", "stringInject"]);

which will replace the {0} and {1} with the array items and return the following string

"this is a test string for stringInject"

or you could replace placeholders with object keys and values like so:

var str = stringInject("My username is {username} on {platform}", { username: "tjcafferkey", platform: "GitHub" });

"My username is tjcafferkey on Github" 

Answer 5

Specific Solution

You can use a function to replace each one.

var str = "I have a cat, a dog, and a goat.";
var mapObj = {
   cat:"dog",
   dog:"goat",
   goat:"cat"
};
str = str.replace(/cat|dog|goat/gi, function(matched){
  return mapObj[matched];
});

jsfiddle example

Generalizing it

If you want to dynamically maintain the regex and just add future exchanges to the map, you can do this

new RegExp(Object.keys(mapObj).join("|"),"gi"); 

to generate the regex. So then it would look like this

var mapObj = {cat:"dog",dog:"goat",goat:"cat"};

var re = new RegExp(Object.keys(mapObj).join("|"),"gi");
str = str.replace(re, function(matched){
  return mapObj[matched];
});

And to add or change any more replacements you could just edit the map. 

fiddle with dynamic regex

Making it Reusable

If you want this to be a general pattern you could pull this out to a function like this

function replaceAll(str,mapObj){
    var re = new RegExp(Object.keys(mapObj).join("|"),"gi");

    return str.replace(re, function(matched){
        return mapObj[matched.toLowerCase()];
    });
}

So then you could just pass the str and a map of the replacements you want to the function and it would return the transformed string.

fiddle with function

To ensure Object.keys works in older browsers, add a polyfill eg from MDN or Es5.

Answer 6

Just in case someone is wondering why the original poster's solution is not working:

var str = "I have a cat, a dog, and a goat.";

str = str.replace(/cat/gi, "dog");
// now str = "I have a dog, a dog, and a goat."

str = str.replace(/dog/gi, "goat");
// now str = "I have a goat, a goat, and a goat."

str = str.replace(/goat/gi, "cat");
// now str = "I have a cat, a cat, and a cat."