javascript regex for xml/html attributes

Question

I cant seem to be able to build a good regex expression (in javascript) that extracts each attribute from an xml node. For example,

<Node attribute="one" attribute2="two" n="nth"></node>

I need an express to give me an array of

['attribute="one"', 'attribute2="two"' ,'n="nth"']

... Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

Time for the [obligatory link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454). — Kerrek SB, Jul 25 '11 at 02:46
@jfriend00 - probably because browsers have a built–in XML parser and suitable DOM methods already. — RobG, Jul 25 '11 at 03:13
I'm not sure i want the overhead of an xml parser library, plus i'm rarely ever going to have well formed xml. im actual parsing the diff generated by git. — James, Jul 26 '11 at 01:30

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

you can't parse XML with a regular expression.

And the link: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

You can get the attributes of a node by iterating over its attributes property:

function getAttributes(el) {
  var r = [];
  var a, atts = el.attributes;

  for (var i=0, iLen=atts.length; i<iLen; i++) {
    a = atts[i];
    r.push(a.name + ': ' + a.value);
  }
  alert(r.join('\n'));
}

Of course you probably want to do somethig other than just put them in an alert.

Here is an article on MDN that includes links to relevant standards:

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/DOM/Node.attributes

I'd definitely use this instead of a regex if possible +1 – Pablo Fernandez Jul 25 '11 at 17:24 — Pablo Fernandez, Jul 25 '11 at 17:24

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 25 '11 at 02:59

3

try this~

  <script type="text/javascript">
    var myregexp = /<node((\s+\w+=\"[^\"]+\")+)><\/node>/im;
    var match = myregexp.exec("<Node attribute=\"one\" attribute2=\"two\" n=\"nth\"></node>");
    if (match != null) {
    result = match[1].trim();
    var arrayAttrs = result.split(/\s+/);
    alert(arrayAttrs);}
  </script>

answered Jul 25 '11 at 02:59

Monday

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I got about this far as well. unfortunately, a space in the attribute value breaks this. Perhaps I need to first replace spaces in between "" with an underscore, then after i split the array, return back to spaces? – James Jul 26 '11 at 01:32

Pablo Fernandez · Answer 3 · 2011-07-25T17:23:23.547

0

The regex is /\w+=".+"/g (note the g of global).

You might try it right now on your firebug / chrome console by doing:

var matches = '<Node attribute="one" attribute2="two" n="nth"></node>'.match(/\w+="\w+"/g)

edited Jul 25 '11 at 17:23

answered Jul 25 '11 at 02:49

Pablo Fernandez

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And if an attribute value has a space it fails. See the link in the first comment. – RobG Jul 25 '11 at 02:57
No, it doesn't. The question was "*a good regex expression ... that extracts each attribute from an xml node*", not one for the very limited example. – RobG Jul 25 '11 at 03:04
@Pablo, maybe you should try it before saying that you fixed anything. ;-) – Qtax Jul 25 '11 at 06:32
@Qtax, oops, left the escape there. Thanks for the correction man :) – Pablo Fernandez Jul 25 '11 at 17:24
@Pablo, you should still try it, even on your limited example. ;-) – Qtax Jul 25 '11 at 17:45
I didn't change the example (which works) but just the regex. – Pablo Fernandez Jul 25 '11 at 19:00

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 25 '11 at 02:50

0

I think you could get it using the following. You would want the second and third matching group.

<[\w\d\-_]+\s+(([\w\d\-_]+)="(.*?)")*>

answered Jul 25 '11 at 02:50

Ryan Gross

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That won't work in a number of cases, such as if there's a namespace, e.g. ``, or an attribute name contains a colon (:) or a period (.) character (not included in the appropriate part of the regular expression) or the value contains a double quote character. – RobG Jul 25 '11 at 03:21

javascript regex for xml/html attributes

4 Answers4

you can't parse XML with a regular expression.