Using JavaScript to Get Substring Between Two Characters

We can use JavaScript to get the substring between two characters by using the JavaScript String substring(), indexOf(), and lastIndexOf() methods.

var newString = someString.substring(someString.indexOf("FirstCharacter")+1,someString.lastIndexOf("LastCharacter"));

Where someString is the string we want to get the substring from, FirstCharacter is the character we want to start the substring after, and LastCharacter is the character we want our substring to end before.

Let’s see this with a string example:

var someString = "Word1aWord2bWord3";
//We want to get the substring between characters 'a' and 'b'
var substring_between_a_and_b = someString.substring(someString.indexOf('a')+1, someString.lastIndexOf('b'));

console.log(substring_between_a_and_b);

#Output:
Word2

We always like to put our code in a function so we can reuse this multiple times without having to rewrite the code every time. So let’s wrap this code in a simple function:

function getSubstring(string,char1,char2){
  return string.substring(string.indexOf(char1)+1,string.lastIndexOf(char2));  
};

And finally let’s use our string example from above with our function:

function getSubstring(string,char1,char2){
  return string.substring(string.indexOf(char1)+1,string.lastIndexOf(char2));  
};

var someString = "Word1aWord2bWord3";
console.log(getSubstring(someString,'a','b'));

#Output:
Word2

When working with strings in JavaScript, the ability to extract pieces of information from those strings can be valuable.

One such piece of information which can be useful is a substring between two characters.

With JavaScript, we can easily get the characters between two characters using the string substring() method.

First, you need to get the position of each of the two characters. Then we can create a substring to get the characters between the two positions.

Below is our simple example again of how you can get the substring between two characters in JavaScript.

var someString = "Word1aWord2bWord3";
//We want to get the substring between characters 'a' and 'b'
var substring_between_a_and_b = someString.substring(someString.indexOf('a')+1,someString.lastIndexOf('b'));

console.log(substring_between_a_and_b);

#Output:
Word2

Using the slice() Method to Get Substring Between Two Characters

We can also use the JavaScript String slice() method to get the substring between two characters. We simply replace the substring method with the slice method in our example above.

var someString = "Word1aWord2bWord3";
//We want to get the substring between characters 'a' and 'b'
var substring_between_a_and_b = someString.slice(someString.indexOf('a')+1,someString.lastIndexOf('b'));

console.log(substring_between_a_and_b);

#Output:
Word2

Hopefully this article has been useful for you to learn how to use JavaScript to get a substring between two characters.