Using regex to match HTML

Question

Here's an input HTML string:

Johnny: My favorite color is pink 
Sarah: My favorite color is blue 
Johnny: Let's swap genders? 
Sarah: OK!

I want to regex-match the bolded part above. Basically put, find any matches between ">" (or beginning of line) and ":"

I made this regex (?>)[^>](.+): but it didn't work correctly, it bolded the parts below, including the tag. I don't want to match any HTML tag:

Johnny: My favorite color is pink 
Sarah: My favorite color is blue 
Johnny: Let's swap genders? 
Sarah: OK!

I am using Java, with code like this:

Matcher m = Pattern.compile("`(?>)[^>](.+):`", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE | Pattern.MULTILINE | Pattern.DOTALL).matcher(string);

In which language are you writing the regex ? You would be better off using a HTMLParser library/module available in the language of your choice than using handcrafted regexes to parse HTML. — sateesh, May 25 '11 at 16:37
Obligitory HTML/Regex warning: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags — Abe Miessler, May 25 '11 at 16:42

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-25T17:40:30.500

4

Following code should work:

String str = "<p>Johnny Smith: My favorite color abc: is pink<br />" +
"Sarah: My favorite color is dark: blue<br />" +
"Johnny: Let's swap: genders?<br />" +
"Sarah: OK: sure!<br />" +
"</p>";

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(?:>|^)([\\w\\s]+)(?=:)", Pattern.MULTILINE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(str); 
while(m.find()){
    System.out.println(m.group(1));
}

OUTPUT

Johnny Smith
Sarah
Johnny
Sarah

edited May 25 '11 at 17:40

answered May 25 '11 at 17:17

anubhava

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That almost worked. If we use the name 'Johnny Smith' instead of 'Johnny', then it won't match. – slashline May 25 '11 at 17:25

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 25 '11 at 16:58

If you want a match when a word is followed by ':' then "\w+:" should be enough. But if you want to include the '>' possibility you can try:

        String s = "<p>Johnny: My favorite color is pink<br />" +
            "Sarah: My favorite color is blue<br />" +
            "Johnny: Let's swap genders?<br />" +
            "Sarah: OK!<br />" +
            "</p>";

    Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[>]?(\\w+):");
    Matcher m = p.matcher(s); 
    while(m.find()){
        System.out.println(m.start()+" : "+m.group(1));
    }

Thank you, but I saw a potential problem: If the name is "Johnny Smith", then only "Smith" is matched and not "Johnny Smith". Almost there! Thanks! — slashline, May 25 '11 at 17:22

Using regex to match HTML

2 Answers2

OUTPUT