I’m working on an automation that transfers customer information from an ecommerce platform to a video service. Everything runs smoothly most of the time, but I run into issues when customer names contain special characters like ampersands or brackets.
I’m trying to write a JavaScript function that will clean up these characters before sending the data, but I keep hitting errors. I’m pretty new to JavaScript so I might be missing something basic.
Here’s what I have so far:
// Function runs in async environment
// await is available if needed
cleanName = userData.customerName.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/g, '_').replace(/_{2,}/g, '_');
return [cleanName];
The goal is to replace any special characters with underscores and then collapse multiple underscores into single ones. What am I doing wrong here?
I’ve encountered a similar challenge when working with data inputs. Your code structure is generally solid, but you may want to ensure that the userData object is fully defined and that customerName is provided. I recommend using const or let for your variable declarations to avoid scoping issues. Additionally, consider including validation to handle cases where the resulting string might consist solely of underscores; for example, you could return a default value instead. Here’s an adjusted version of your function:
const cleanName = (userData.customerName || '').toString().replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/g, '_').replace(/_{2,}/g, '_').replace(/^_+|_+$/g, '');
return [cleanName || 'Default Name'];
``` This ensures all edge cases are addressed and helps maintain data integrity.
quick fix - add let or const before cleanName. Also check if userData.customerName exists first or you’ll get errors when it’s undefined. Try: const cleanName = userData?.customerName?.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/g, '_').replace(/_{2,}/g, '_') || 'unknown';
Your regex looks good, but the issue is likely with how you’re handling the userData object or the function structure. I’ve encountered similar problems in automation scripts, and the most frequent culprit is when customerName is undefined or null, which would cause the regex to fail before it even executes. Consider wrapping your logic in a function that includes validation: javascript function cleanCustomerName(userData) { if (!userData || !userData.customerName) { return ['']; } const cleanName = userData.customerName .replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/g, '_') .replace(/_{2,}/g, '_') .trim(); return [cleanName]; } Also, ensure you’re invoking this as a function and not just using loose code, as that may also explain the errors you’re facing.