Java regex matching each occurence separately

Question

I have this regex:

<a href(.*foo.bar.*)a>

For this string, it gives me only 1 match, but I need it to give 3 matches.

<a href="https://foo.bar/1">First</a> RANDOM TEXT COULD BE HERE <a href="https://foo.bar/2">Second</a> RANDOM TEXT COULD BE HERE <a href="https://foo.bar/3">Third</a>

So each a href should be individual.

How could I accomplish this?

EDIT:

This code searches for matches:

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("<a href(.*foo.bar.*)a>");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(body);
List<String> matches = new ArrayList<String>();
while (matcher.find()) {
    matches.add(matcher.group());
}

[*Parsing HTML is a solved problem. You do not need to solve it. You just need to be lazy.*](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/11/parsing-html-the-cthulhu-way.html) — Duncan Jones, Jun 27 '13 at 07:02
If you're working with html, you should use a html parser... [stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags) — jlordo, Jun 27 '13 at 07:03

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 27 '13 at 06:59

6

Change to:

<a href(.*?foo\.bar.*?)a>

It removes the greediness. And real dots should be escaped to \..

answered Jun 27 '13 at 06:59

dda

6,030
2
25
34

Problem occured, the start seems to be greedy also. The regex will match this whole part, but should only take the ending. ` TEST TEST MY REAL PAGE` – Jaanus Jun 27 '13 at 07:40

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 27 '13 at 07:22

1

Use .*? instead of .*. The greedy quantifier matches characters as many as possible, while the reluctant quantifier matches the least number of characters in a single find operation.

Besides, use foo\.bar if you intend to match a literal text of "foo.bar".

answered Jun 27 '13 at 07:22

dexjq23

366
2
6

Thanks, like the explanation. – Jaanus Jun 27 '13 at 07:23

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 27 '13 at 23:26

0

Hope below code will help you:

int noOfTimefoundString = 0;
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("<a href=\"https://foo.bar");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(body);
List<String> matches = new ArrayList<String>();
while (matcher.find()) {
  matches.add(matcher.group());
  noOfTimefoundString++;
}
Iterator matchesItr = matches.iterator();
while(matchesItr.hasNext()){
  System.out.println(matchesItr.next());
}
System.out.println("No. of times search string found = "+noOfTimefoundString);

edited Jun 27 '13 at 23:26

dda

6,030
2
25
34

answered Jun 27 '13 at 07:12

D-Nesh

1
1

Yeah, but I need to store them to somewhere. I need the full urls with tags. – Jaanus Jun 27 '13 at 07:13

Java regex matching each occurence separately

3 Answers3