How can i extract times from specific string?

Question

My code is:

htmltoextract = new Uri("http://test");

client = new WebClient();
f = client.DownloadString(htmltoextract);
client.Dispose();
string pattern = @"(\d{12})";
Regex ex = new Regex(pattern, RegexOptions.Singleline);

MatchCollection matches = ex.Matches(f);
IFormatProvider provider = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;
List<DateTime> dateTime = new List<DateTime>();
foreach (Match match in matches)
{
     dateTime.Add(DateTime.ParseExact(match.Value, "yyyyMMddHHmm", provider));
}

Inside f somewhere inside i have this line:

var imageUrls = ["/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102145&ir=false","/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102130&ir=false","/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102115&ir=false","/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102100&ir=false","/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102045&ir=false","/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102030&ir=false","/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102015&ir=false","/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102000&ir=false","/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501101945&ir=false"];

I need to extract it twice to two Lists:

The first List is dateTime

The second List should be string and it should add it to it:

/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102145&ir=false
/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102130&ir=false
/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102115&ir=false
/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102100&ir=false
/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102045&ir=false
/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102030&ir=false
/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102015&ir=false
/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501102000&ir=false
/image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501101945&ir=false

I have Two problems:

How do I extract the times and the strings /image2.ashx?region=is&time=201501101945&ir=false

how do I extract it all only from the part:var imageUrls = ["........

Since inside f there are other places with this times I need to extract it only from the part start from var imageUrls = [" and end with "];

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

Steps:

Use HtmlAgilityPack to get Html and extract particular <script> tag.
likely that script block can be matched with just reg-ex or even basic String.IndexOf to cut out list of urls
with just list of Urls use String.Split to cut into unique once
For each Url use Uri class to extract Uri.Query portion and than Get individual query parameters from Uri

Note: If JavaScript is too complicated you may need to get real JavaScript parser...

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 11 '15 at 07:53

This is what I would do. Its not a purist solution, but it works.

(below assumes that your data format remains exactly the same for a reasonable period of time. If the people managing the source change, this code will break!)

Do a regex match for the pattern "var imageUrls = [ ... ];" and move it to a seperate string.
From this, chop off the var imageUrls = [ and ]; from the string.

Path A:

Using string.split(), create an array of the url strings.
Run a for-loop through the strings and assign them to the Uri class (eg: myUri). You can now get the value portion of each query string variable through HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(myUri.Query).Get("time");

Path B:

Also chop off the "/image2.ashx?region=is&time=" and "&ir=false" leaving only what you actually want.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 11 '15 at 09:06

0

To match the time use:

(?!/image2\.ashx\?region=is&time)\d+(?=&ir=false)

DEMO

answered Jan 11 '15 at 09:06

Andie2302

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How can i extract times from specific string?

3 Answers3