Regular Expression to isolate an html tag

Question

I'm looking for a regular expression to isolate an html tag. This includes the TAG the ATTRIBUTES and the CONTNET inside.

Let's say I have this:

<html> 
<body>
aajsdfkjaskd 
<TAGNAME name="bla" context="non">hfdfhdj </TAGNAME>
</body>
 </html>

I need a regular expression that would return:

<TAGNAME name="bla" context="non">hfdfhdj </TAGNAME>

Thank, Joe

[Don't use regexes for parsing HTML](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454) — John Conde, Jul 11 '12 at 15:11
In the **general** case, that's not possible. If there are specific constraints on the nature of the HTML surrounding and/or contained in the tag, you should describe those. — Pointy, Jul 11 '12 at 15:11
@Pointy: I believe this to be possible in C# regex (which support balanced matching). And I believe, that nobody really wants to do that =) — Jens, Jul 11 '12 at 15:16

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 11 '12 at 15:15

2

Don't use a regex, use an HTML parser instead. Much more reliable and easier to work with.

If you're a PHP developer I recommend you use this one (http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/).

answered Jul 11 '12 at 15:15

GhostInTheSecureShell

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 11 '12 at 15:16

1

Look into HTML Agility Pack it will make things a lot easier.

answered Jul 11 '12 at 15:16

Stephen Gilboy

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 11 '12 at 15:13

0

use this regex <TAGNAME.+?</TAGNAME>

answered Jul 11 '12 at 15:13

burning_LEGION

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Just make sure there are no nested `TAGNAME`s – Mike Park Jul 11 '12 at 15:15
So what about `Hello world banana` – Pointy Jul 11 '12 at 15:15
it's catch outer tag with inner inside – burning_LEGION Jul 11 '12 at 15:17

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 11 '14 at 21:36

0

If this is the main thing you're trying to do, XLST is a good tool to do it with. You can easily select just TAGNAME and copy over the attributes and text. See http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/ for an intro.

edited Feb 11 '14 at 21:36

rene

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answered Jul 11 '12 at 15:16

WBT

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 11 '12 at 15:41

First of all: don't do this. Parsing HTML with regex is a maintenance nightmare and will most probably fail on any real world example of HTML. There are better options (like using a HTML parser like the HTML Agility pack).

To answer your question though, the following regex will do what you want if the HTML code

is well formed (no missing closing tag, etc)
does not contain comments with "TAGNAME" in them
does not contain script blocks with "TAGNAME" in them
maybe more

It can be expanded to cover some of these cases, but you really don't want to =)

    <TAGNAME(<TAGNAME (?<tagcounter>)|</TAGNAME>(?<-tagcounter>)|.)*</TAGNAME>(?(tagcounter)(?!))

You'd need RegexOptions.SingleLine, too. See it in action at Ideone.com

Regular Expression to isolate an html tag

5 Answers5