How to parse out data of a string - coldfusion

Question

I have a function which gets a string from another website and if I extract it I end up with the following string
IFX TMP2134567 1433010010 WT33 PARTIAL 2014-11-26 09:43:58 IFX TEMP12345 1433010003 SW80 PARTIAL 2014-11-26 09:43:10 IFX AP RETERM 007 1418310108 MB01 CONFIRMED 2014-07-03 09:48:37
In this case it's 2 records which have 6 fields each and they are all separated by a space. how can I go and read the string and add these into an structure and array to access them.
The fields would be set up like this
IFX
TMP2134567 (this field may contain a space)
1433010010
WT33
PARTIAL
2014-11-26 09:43:58.
So if we use the " " as a separator we would get 7 since the 6th is a date time and has a space between I could also use 7 since I can put 6 and 7 back together and store date and time separately.
My question is there a way to do this with 6 or if I have to use 7 how would I do that. I tried valuelist but that does not work.
I know a couple of things in my list, 1st one is always 3 Char, 4th is always 4 char and my record ends with a date time in format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
To make it a bit more complicated I just found that the 2nd field can have spaces like in the 3rd record which looks like this "AP RETERM 007"

Answer 1

Another option is to create a JSON string with your data like this, and then deserialize it.
<cfsavecontent variable="sampledata">
IFX TMP2134567 1433010010 WT33 PARTIAL 2014-11-26 09:43:58 IFX TEM P12345 1433010003 SW80 PARTIAL 2014-11-26 09:43:10 IFX AP RETERM 007 1418310108 MB01 CONFIRMED 2014-07-03 09:48:37</cfsavecontent>
<cfset asJson = ReReplaceNoCase(sampledata,"\s*(.{3}) (.*?) (\d+) (.{4}) ([^\s]*) (\d+-\d+-\d+ \d+:\d+:\d+)\s*",'["\1","\2","\3","\4","\5","\6"],',"ALL")>
<!--- Replace the last comma in the generated string with a closing bracket --->
<cfset asJson = "[" & ReReplace(asJson,",$","]","ALL")>
<cfset result_array = DeSerializeJSON(asJson)>
<cfdump var="#result_array#">
You can access the data simply with the resulting array.
So here's how I understand it
3 characters
Variable string
All digits
4 characters
I assume this value never contains a space
Date/Time

Answer 2

Based on assuming a "yes" to my question above, this solution works:
<cfscript>
raw = " IFX TMP2134567 1433010010 WT33 PARTIAL 2014-11-26 09:43:58 IFX TEMP12345 1433010003 SW80 PARTIAL 2014-11-26 09:43:10 IFX AP RETERM 007 1418310108 MB01 CONFIRMED 2014-07-03 09:48:37";
recordPattern = "(\S+)\s+([\w\s]+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\S+)\s+(\S+)\s+(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}\s\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2})";
keys = ["a","b","c","d","e","f"];
records = getRecordsFromString(raw, recordPattern, keys);
writeDump(records);
function getRecordsFromString(raw, pattern, keys){
var offset = 1;
var records = [];
while (true) {
var result = getRecord(raw, recordPattern, keys, offset);
offset = result.offset;
if (!offset) break;
arrayAppend(records, result.record);
}
return records;
}
function getRecord(raw, recordPattern, keys, offset){
var match = reFind(recordPattern, raw, offset, true);
if (arrayLen(match.pos) != arrayLen(keys)+1){
return {record="", offset=0};
}
var keyIdx=1;
for (var key in keys){
record[key] = mid(raw, match.pos[++keyIdx], match.len[keyIdx]);
}
return {record=record, offset=offset+match.len[1]};
}
</cfscript>
Obviously you will need to tweak the recordPattern and keys to suit your actual needs.
And if you don't understand the regular expression usage there, do yourself a favour and read up on it. I do a series on "regular expressions in CFML" on my blog, which would be an adequate starting point.