Regex to fetch all matching values from xml node

Question

Following this question it gives me just 1st match. I want to get all the matching into a string or a string array

This is my part of output from which I need to extract all Category's

<Trace Enabled="false">
        <ActiveCategories>
            <Category>ENVIRONMENT</Category>
            <Category>EXEC</Category>
            <Category>EXTERNALS</Category>
            <Category>FILESYSTEM</Category>
            <Category>INPUT_DOC</Category>
            <Category>INTERFACES</Category>
            <Category>NETWORKING</Category>
            <Category>OUTPUT_DOC</Category>
            <Category>PREPROCESSOR_INPUT</Category>
            <Category>REQUEST</Category>
            <Category>SYSTEMRESOURCES</Category>
            <Category>VIEWIO</Category>
            <Category>ALL</Category>
        </ActiveCategories>
        <SeverityLevel>ERROR</SeverityLevel>
        <MessageInfo>
            <ProcessAndThreadIds>true</ProcessAndThreadIds>
            <TimeStamp>true</TimeStamp>
        </MessageInfo>
        <TraceFile>
            <FileName>CMDS_log.txt</FileName>
            <MaxFileSize>1000000</MaxFileSize>
            <RecyclingMethod>Restart</RecyclingMethod>
        </TraceFile>
    </Trace>

right now through the below code I am only able to fetch ENVIRONMENT, I need to fetch all of the Category's value

def regexFinder(String myInput,String myRegex)
{
String ResultString
Pattern regex
Matcher regexMatcher

regex = Pattern.compile(myRegex, Pattern.DOTALL);
regexMatcher = regex.matcher(myInput);
if (regexMatcher.find()) {
    ResultString = regexMatcher.group();
}
}

tempResultString=regexFinder(ResultString,"(?<=<Category>)(?:(?!</Category>).)*")
    csm.cmengine_category(tempResultString)
    {           "${rs}"     }

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

3

Don't use regex to parse XML, use a parser.

See RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

Community

1
1

answered Sep 02 '11 at 08:08

Clement Herreman

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Of course you're right in principle. But in this simple case (machine-generated, well-formed XML without comments or quoted strings) I think you can get away with regexes if you're aware that it's a quick and dirty solution. – Tim Pietzcker Sep 02 '11 at 08:19
Machine generated usually meaning that a developper created the program that generate it, I'm as worried about it's validity as if it was manually written! More seriously, using the right tool to the right task is important. Regex just aren't suited to parse XML ontheir own. – Clement Herreman Sep 02 '11 at 08:25

Tim Pietzcker · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-02T08:31:44.843

1

You need to apply .find() repeatedly to iterate over all results:

Matcher regexMatcher = regex.matcher(myInput);
List<String> matchList = new ArrayList<String>();
while (regexMatcher.find()) {
    matchList.add(regexMatcher.group());
}

edited Sep 02 '11 at 08:31

answered Sep 02 '11 at 08:15

Tim Pietzcker

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Thanks for your answer. So does it come into a String array or a String? – AabinGunz Sep 02 '11 at 08:23
Well, `regexMatcher.group()` is a string. I've changed my sample to put the results into an `ArrayList`. – Tim Pietzcker Sep 02 '11 at 08:32

Regex to fetch all matching values from xml node

2 Answers2

Don't use regex to parse XML, use a parser.

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