How to Create Array from a Comma-Separated String in JavaScript

Sometimes you have a comma-separated string and you want to convert it to an array.

A good example is if you're reading a CSV file and you want to retrieve the data as an array.

In this post, we'll learn how to create an array from a comma-separated string in JavaScript.

How to create an array from a comma-separated string in JavaScript

To start, let's define an example comma-separated string:

JAVASCRIPT
const string = "apple,banana,orange";

Now, we can use the built-in split method and pass it a separator, in this case, a comma, and it will take our string and turn it into an array.

JAVASCRIPT
const string = "apple,banana,orange";

const array = string.split(",");

console.log(array);

BASH
[ 'apple', 'banana', 'orange' ]

That's all there is to it.

In case you want to limit how many times the separator is used, you can pass an optional second argument to the split method.

Let's say you only want the first two elements:

JAVASCRIPT
const string = "apple,banana,orange";

const array = string.split(",", 2);

console.log(array);

BASH
[ 'apple', 'banana' ]

Alternatively, if you pass the method a blank string as the separator, it will simply split the string into individual characters.

JAVASCRIPT
const string = "apple,banana,orange";

const array = string.split("");

console.log(array);

BASH
[ 'a', 'p', 'p', 'l', 'e', ',', 'b', 'a', 'n', 'a', 'n', 'a', ',', 'o', 'r', 'a', 'n', 'g', 'e' ]

Conclusion

In this post, we looked at the different ways to create an array from a comma-separated string in JavaScript.

Simply use the split method and pass it a separator and the return value will be an array.

Thanks for reading!

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