Regular Expressions

[+chorpeac MVC]

I have a regular expression in a ASP.NET app I am using. I am trying to extract the url from the href of an anchor tag. It works great unless there is some attribute before the href. I got it working for attributes following after the href...

Regex.Replace(input,"<a href=\"(?<link>((.|\n)*?))\" ([^>]*)>(?<text>((.|\n)*?))</a>","${link}");

So if I have a

<a href="https://www.neowin.net">Neowin</a>'>https://www.neowin.net">Neowin</a> or

<a href="https://www.neowin.net" target="_blank">Neowin</a>

I will get the https://www.neowin.net

But if I have a <a class="regularlink" href="https://www.neowin.net">Neowin</a>'>https://www.neowin.net">Neowin</a>

it doesn't work.

So this "([^>]*)" allows attributes after the href, and I tried it before the href too like this

Regex.Replace(input,"<a ([^>]*) href=\"(?<link>((.|\n)*?))\" ([^>]*)>(?<text>((.|\n)*?))</a>","${link}");

But that doesn't work. Anyknow have any ideas?

[+primortal Subscriber²]

Playing aroung with RegexBuddy (http://www.regexbuddy.com/) they had this for extracting domains and it seemed to worked with attributes in the href

\b((?#protocol)https?|ftp)://((?#domain)[-A-Z0-9.]+)((?#file)/[-A-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|!:,.;]*)?((?#parameters)\?[-A-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|!:,.;]*)?

[+chorpeac MVC]

regex buddy...nice... :D Does it give descriptions of the symbols instead of having to scour the net?

[+chorpeac MVC]

Ok sorry, let me rephrase what I am trying to do.

I want to replace all <a href="http://address">link text</a> (Anchor Tags) with the text that is present inside the href attribute.

My problem is, the expression string I have won't replace anchors that have some attributes before the href attribute.

So can how can I modify this

<a href=\"(?<link>((.|\n)*?))\" ([^>]*)>(?<text>((.|\n)*?))</a>

Or is there another string that will do it...

[+primortal Subscriber²]

not sure, something like this -> http://www.regexbuddy.com/create.html

[+chorpeac MVC]

I found this one

(?<anchor><\s*a\s*(?:(?:\b\w+\b\s*(?:=\s*(?:"[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^"'<> ]+)\s*)?)*)/?\s*>)(?<linktext>.*)<\s*/a\s*>

but I am trying to figure out how to get the data between the href

Found this one here

[+chorpeac MVC]

anyone have an idea?

[+mrbester MVC]

I think you were so close with your original try it'll hurt.

Regex.Replace(input,"<a ([^>]*) href=\"(?<link>((.|\n)*?))\" ([^>]*)>(?<text>((.|\n)*?))</a>","${link}");

will look for <a href="... (TWO spaces between a and href [possibly other content, but not necessarily])

Regex.Replace(input,"<a ([^>]*)href=\"(?<link>((.|\n)*?))\" ([^>]*)>(?<text>((.|\n)*?))</a>","${link}");

might well work (all the the bracketed bit is saying is "anything other than a > [the end of tag], a zero match is acceptable")