extract a value from a string using regex

Question

I'm trying to extract a value from a string using regex. The string looks like this:

<faultcode>&lt;![CDATA[900015The new password is not long enough. PasswordMinimumLength is 6.]]&gt;</faultcode>

I am trying to diplay only the error message to end user.

Is there a chance you're parsing XML yourself instead of using a tool? — Yuriy Faktorovich, Dec 14 '11 at 13:12
Is <![CDATA[ always appears in start of your string? and ]]> in end of string? — Saeed Amiri, Dec 14 '11 at 13:15
If this is the only string, do it by hand. I suspect you mean "strings", and then 2+ samples would be a lot better. Plus expected result. — H H, Dec 14 '11 at 13:15
i need to show following string to end user "The new password is not long enough. PasswordMinimumLength is 6." — agnikhil82, Dec 14 '11 at 13:18
I hope there's a good reason for this, because it looks pretty stupid. — Yuriy Faktorovich, Dec 14 '11 at 14:09

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 14 '11 at 13:16

2

Since you probably want everything <![CDATA[ and ]]> this should fit:

<!\[CDATA\[(.+?)\]\]>

answered Dec 14 '11 at 13:16

luastoned

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H H · Answer 2 · 2011-12-14T13:25:33.210

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The only sensible thing is to load it into an XElement (or XDocument, XmlDocument) and extract the Value from the CDATA element.

XElement e = XElement.Parse(xmlSnippet);
string rawMsg = (e.FirstNode as XCData).Value;
string msg = rawMsg.Substring("900015".Length);

edited Dec 14 '11 at 13:25

answered Dec 14 '11 at 13:20

H H

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Assuming the `<` is actually `<` in the data. – H H Dec 14 '11 at 13:45

Quick Joe Smith · Answer 3 · 2011-12-14T13:28:06.640

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Updated to correspond with the question edit:

var xml = XElement.Parse(yourString);
var allText = xml.Value;
var stripLeadingNumbers = Regex.Match(xml.Value, @"^\d*(.*)").Groups[1].Value;

edited Dec 14 '11 at 13:28

answered Dec 14 '11 at 13:20

Quick Joe Smith

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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

First, and foremost, using regex to parse XML / HTML is bad.

Now, by error message I assume you mean the text, not including the numbers. An expression like so would probably do the trick:

\<([^>]+)\>&lt;!\[CDATA\[\d*(.*)\]\]&gt;\</\1\>

The error message will be in the second group. This will work with the sample that you have given, but I'd sooner use XDocument or XmlDocument to parse it. If you are using C#, there really isn't a good reason to not use either of those classes.

extract a value from a string using regex

4 Answers4