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Hi I am trying to find RegEx which helps me to replace words in HTML. Problem occurs if the word i am trying to replace is in HTML tag as well.

Example:<img class="TEST">asd TEST asd dsa asd </img>
and i need to get the second "TEST" only.

RegEx i am looking for should look like >[^<]*TEST, but this regex takes chars before the word TEST as well. Is it possible to select only word TEST ? but imagine other combinations as well (i dont think " TEST " is a good solution as soon as text could contain another chars as well)

rhorvath
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    see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454 – Bala R Apr 21 '11 at 13:35
  • This is a job for a parser. Do a search for: "java html parser" and you will be on your way. – ridgerunner Apr 21 '11 at 15:33

3 Answers3

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First of all, regex is not good option for html parsing.. There are lots of enhanced html parsers that you can use..

But if you insist to use regex , here is the regex ;

(?<=>.*)TEST(?=.*<)

for java,

(?<=>.{0,100000})TEST(?=.{0,100000}<)

for more information why we can not use * or + with lookbehind regex in Java , Regex look-behind without obvious maximum length in Java

Community
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Gursel Koca
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  • i am not parsing whole html, for that i use Jericho. I just wanted easy way of replacing some words. I cant make your regex working ...testing here http://myregexp.com/ – rhorvath Apr 21 '11 at 14:12
  • I like your solution, but not working for code like this: `

    [newLine here] TEST [newLine here]

    `     – rhorvath Apr 22 '11 at 16:27
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First of all, like has been said and will be said again, using regex for XML is usually a bad idea. But for really simple cases it can work, especially if you can live with sub-optimal results.

So, just put the test in a group and replace only the group

Something like

Pattern replacePattern = Pattern.compile(">[^<]*(TEST)");
Matcher matcher = replacePattern.matcher(theString);
String result = theString.substr(1,matcher.start(1)) + replacement + theString.substr(matcher.end(1));

Disclaimer: Not tested, might have some off-by-ones. But the concept should be clear.

Joeri Hendrickx
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How about if "TEST" is inside another tag than , like say inside the body tag, or for that matter inside the html tag?

Dude Dawg Homie
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  • ahh maybe i said it wrong way. i mean between '<' and '>'. it is okey if word is inside tag <> here >, not ok if its < here>. – rhorvath Apr 21 '11 at 15:28