Simple Regex Pattern Matching

Question

Here's my pattern

<a href="(.*?)" onmousedown="test\(\)">

Here's the source

<tags><tags><a href="http://google.com" onmousedown="test()"></tags></tags>

If I use that pattern, I get this result:

<a href="http://google.com" onmousedown="test()">

What I want to get is just

http://google.com

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you! :)

why not `''.match(//)[1]` - Not a fan of parsing HTML using regex... could always lead to unexpected results — Arun P Johny, Mar 21 '14 at 02:48
In the `preg_match` documentation http://php.net/preg_match, it will show you how to access subpattern matches. — faintsignal, Mar 21 '14 at 02:52
If this is PHP, why not use [`DomDocument`](http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.domdocument.php) or Microsoft.mshtml for vb.net. I mean, if you're getting the data from a website, parsing would be a better route. However, if you're simply getting one or two tags, you can still just explode by `href="` and `" `. — Dave Chen, Mar 21 '14 at 02:56
Possible a duplicate of [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/844001/javascript-regex-and-submatches](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/844001/javascript-regex-and-submatches) if you are using String's match() with global modifier — xiaoboa, Mar 21 '14 at 03:11

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 21 '14 at 08:34

I have modified the regex slightly(adding .* at both ends) so that it fits with both the below examples.

var regex = /.*?<a href="([^">]*)" onmousedown="test\(\)">.*/; 
var input = '<tags><tags><a href="http://google.com" onmousedown="test()"></tags></tags>';

Approach#1: Using regex replace. In this case this is matching the whole string with the pattern and replace it with only the first captured group($1).

url1 = input.replace(regex, "$1");
alert(url1)

Approach#2: Using regex matching with the input string and the pattern and after that only picking the first captured group([1]).

url2 = regex.exec(input)[1];
alert(url2);

In both cases the output will be the url from href tag.

Simple Regex Pattern Matching

1 Answers1