🚨 Real-world use-case: I wanted to convert an excel list into an array; it had 200+ records, so a pain to do manually.
So why not create something easy in JavaScript!
The end goal is to have a text area where we can input our list and auto-convert it into an array.
This is going to be the result in Codepen:
See the Pen Learn how to convert a list into an array in JavaScript by Chris Bongers (@rebelchris) on CodePen.
HTML Structure
The HTML will be super easy for this. We just need a textarea and a paragraph to output our array.
<div class="container">
<textarea id="textarea">
Paste
your
list
here</textarea
>
<p id="array">["Paste","your ","list ","here"]</p>
</div>
CSS Styling
Let’s also add some super easy CSS to make it look good:
.container {
display: flex;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
height: 100vh;
flex-direction: column;
background: #3a86ff;
}
textarea {
padding: 10px;
min-width: 200px;
width: 50vw;
height: 100px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
border-radius: 10px;
}
#array {
background: #efefef;
border: 1px dashed #333;
padding: 10px;
width: 50vw;
min-width: 200px;
word-wrap: break-word;
margin-bottom: 10px;
color: #ff006e;
border-radius: 10px;
}
JavaScript convert a list into an array
Ok, on to the magic part, let’s convert our array input into an array.
We start by adding defining our variables.
const textarea = document.getElementById('textarea');
const array = document.getElementById('array');
Now we can add our input listener to the textarea element.
textarea.addEventListener('input', function () {
const arrayValues = textarea.value.split(/\n/g);
array.innerHTML = JSON.stringify(arrayValues);
});
And then, for some magic, we will add a click event to our paragraph, which will auto-select all text.
array.addEventListener('click', function () {
const range = document.createRange();
const selection = window.getSelection();
range.selectNodeContents(array);
selection.removeAllRanges();
selection.addRange(range);
});
An awesome, simple tool, but effective!
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