how can I exctract attribute value using JAVA regex

Question

I have such string:

<a href="https://host-test.com/create?userName=test3&amp;user-mail=myemail@gmail.com&amp;id=14b72820-3855-4f2b-9a39-543ced6784a0&amp;downloadurl=https://host-test.com:443/123/rest/tmp-z7vvymo3wmfzke/vfs/v2/downloadzip/&amp;projectid=d29ya3NwYWNleXFpYXlwZjgwb2sxNDA2MjovY3JlYXRlQWNj:createAcc;" style="font-family:Myriad Pro,arial,tahoma,serif;color:#fff;font-size:14px;text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold" title="Confirm tenant creation" target="_blank">
                            <div style="font-family:'Lucida Grande',sans-serif;border-radius:5px;width:120px;min-height:40px;line-height:40px;border:1px solid #577e15;color:#fff;text-align:center;background:#e77431;margin:15px 0 15px">
                                Confirm
                            </div>
                        </a>

and I need extract using regexp only href value:

https://host-test.com/create?userName=test3&amp;user-mail=myemail@gmail.com&amp;id=14b72820-3855-4f2b-9a39-543ced6784a0&amp;downloadurl=https://host-test.com:443/123/rest/tmp-z7vvymo3wmfzke/vfs/v2/downloadzip/&amp;projectid=d29ya3NwYWNleXFpYXlwZjgwb2sxNDA2MjovY3JlYXRlQWNj:createAcc;

also href value each time can be different shorter or longer

`I need extract using regexp only` just to make sure, you cant use any parsers? — Pshemo, Aug 15 '13 at 18:19
I think I [read somewhere](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454) that you can't parse HTML with RegEx or you'd unleash hell on earth or something. — Mike Christensen, Aug 15 '13 at 18:20
@MikeChristensen I prefer [the less subjective article](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/11/parsing-html-the-cthulhu-way.html). — Bernhard Barker, Aug 15 '13 at 18:24

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 15 '13 at 18:24

4

myString.replaceFirst(myString, "^<a\\s+href\\s*=\\s*\"([^\"]+)\".*", , "$1");

assuming myString contains your string with the a element.

As the href attributes cannot be nested, this should be fine and no full HTML parser is needed. A restriction is that it will only find href attributes in double quotes.

answered Aug 15 '13 at 18:24

FrankPl

13,205
2
14
40

You can just use a regex and capture that pattern. `]*\shref=['"](.*)["']` – hwnd Aug 15 '13 at 18:52
Your regex would give a wrong result for e. g. ``. Then it would capture `a" id="y`. – FrankPl Aug 15 '13 at 18:55
Aww your right sorry I missed where it had additional tags in the string, my fault. – hwnd Aug 15 '13 at 18:57

Pshemo · Answer 2 · 2013-08-15T18:38:16.563

For this particular string you can try something like

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("<a\\shref=\"([^\"]+)");
//or if you cant use group numbers use look-behind mechanism like
//Pattern.compile("(?<=<a\\shref=\")[^\"]+");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(yourString);
if (matcher.find())
    System.out.println(matcher.group(1));

but if your string can change (like href atrubute can have other atributes before it) it can not work as expected. That is one of the reasons to use parsers rather then regex.

how can I exctract attribute value using JAVA regex

2 Answers2

Linked

Related