Regex xml date expression

Question

I have a deserialized xml which looks like this:

How to write a regex to find and return only first date expression 23.12.2010, which may be another in every another xml documents.

I have never used regex and I don't even know how to write a pattern for it. Please help.

If the date always appear at `line=7` and `id=17`, you should go with XML parser. — hjpotter92, Sep 26 '16 at 07:50
If what you want is a regex to detect a date with a pattern of `dd.mm.yyyy`, then what you need looks either like `\d{2}\.\d{2}\.\d{4}` or like `\d\d?\.\d\d?\.\d{4}` if you could have a date like `1/2/2010` instead of `01/02/2010`. — Nadia Cerezo, Sep 26 '16 at 07:56

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

3

Don't use Regex for HTML/XML parsing. Use Html/Xml parser. Here is explain well why you should not use it.

RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

Can you provide some examples of why it is hard to parse XML and HTML with a regex?

You can load the string in XDocument or XmlDocument and using linq to take whatever you need.

Here little example of how to do it:

string str =
@"<?xml version=""1.0""?>
<!-- comment at the root level -->
<Root>
    <Child>Content</Child>
</Root>";
XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(str);

After that select needed nodes using linq and take the value. Here this question could help:

Finding element in XDocument?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

Community

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answered Sep 26 '16 at 07:56

mybirthname

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Thank you for advice. I'll try that ;) – Grzesiek Zimnoch Sep 26 '16 at 08:02
@GrzesiekZimnoch you can accept the answer if helped you. – mybirthname Sep 26 '16 at 08:05

eol · Answer 2 · 2016-09-26T08:10:28.547

0

As suggested by the others, use a Html/Xml parser. If you really want to use regex, you can try this:

 string xml= "yourXMLString";
 string pattern = @"\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\.\d{4}"; //also matches dates like 1.3.2016. Use \d{2} to only match 01.03.2016
 Regex regEx = new Regex(pattern);

 Match m = regEx.Match(xml);   // m is the first match
 if (m.Success)
 {
    Console.WriteLine(m.Value); //prints the first found date
 }

edited Sep 26 '16 at 08:10

answered Sep 26 '16 at 07:56

eol

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ok. Thank you. I have that problem that my program need to read all docs looks like this one. One has date like 01.01.2000 , other has date like 01/01/2000, other 01- 01- 2000, and other 01 - 01 - 2000. Don't know how to solve it with pattern. – Grzesiek Zimnoch Sep 26 '16 at 08:06

Regex xml date expression

2 Answers2