Can't find an appropriate regex to match the below:

Question

I am trying to grab the contents of the response text i.e. the date. However, if it is anything else other than a date, it should not grab the content. Can someone help me here please.. My current regex is : 'Renewal/Expiration Date:[^\d]([\d/])'

    <div class="textbkStyle">Renewal/Expiration Date:
        <div class="responseText">


                01/01/2019

        </div>
    </div>

The problem being if the xml looks like this

    <div class="textbkStyle">Renewal/Expiration Date:
        <div class="responseText">


                NOT AVAILABLE

        </div>
    </div>

It goes and skips the NOT AVAILABLE text and grabs another consecutive date in the page which matches the format. Also suggestions for resources to get better at regex are also appreciated.

Prayson W. Daniel · Answer 1 · 2019-11-04T18:17:13.770

1

Regex is not the best tool for this. I would use html parser. Example BeautifulSoup: pip install beautifulsoup4 and do

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

raw_1 = '''
<div class="textbkStyle">Renewal/Expiration Date:
        <div class="responseText">

                01/01/2019

        </div>
    </div>
'''

raw_2 = '''
div class="textbkStyle">Renewal/Expiration Date:
        <div class="responseText">


                NOT AVAILABLE

        </div>
    </div>
'''

soup = BeautifulSoup(raw_1, 'html.parser')

print(soup.find('div',{'class':'responseText'}).getText(strip=True))

soup_2 = BeautifulSoup(raw_2, 'html.parser')

print(soup_2.find('div',{'class':'responseText'}).getText(strip=True))

Or a function:


def get_response_text(raw):

    soup = BeautifulSoup(raw, 'html.parser')

    tag = soup.find('div',{'class':'responseText'})

    return tag.getText(strip=True)



print(get_response_text(raw_1))

print(get_response_text(raw_2))

edited Nov 04 '19 at 18:17

answered Nov 04 '19 at 18:06

Prayson W. Daniel

14,191
4
51
57

1

Hey, Thank you so much! This is definitely going to help me understand and switch to beautifulsoup instead! :) – tm_2906 Nov 04 '19 at 18:14
I find it readable than regex plus easier to modify to find things in html DOM ;) – Prayson W. Daniel Nov 04 '19 at 18:18
1

yeah! true. I have been scratching my head since an hour or so. I am working on implementing this in my project. – tm_2906 Nov 04 '19 at 18:27

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 04 '19 at 17:43

0

Although you shouldn't, here is how you can:

<div class=\"textbkStyle\">Renewal/Expiration Date:\s*<div class=\"responseText\">\s*(\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4})\s*</div>\s*</div>

And your date will be available in \1

https://regex101.com/r/7Yn7zk/1

answered Nov 04 '19 at 17:43

MonkeyZeus

20,375
4
36
77

1

I'm confused... why show a regex at all if it's known to be a bad practice? – EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine Nov 04 '19 at 17:47
1

@EJoshuaS-ReinstateMonica Given the limited subset of data presented by OP, the regex is fairly safe. – MonkeyZeus Nov 04 '19 at 17:48
Thanks! you are probably right. even though it works for now, the best thing to do is use an xml parser – tm_2906 Nov 04 '19 at 18:13

Can't find an appropriate regex to match the below:

2 Answers2