Match and extract href info using regex-CodePudding

I am trying to make a regex that match and extract href link information in more than one case, for example both with double, single and no quotation mark in Swift.

A regex to match href and extract info <a href=https://www.google.com>Google</a>.
<a href="https://www.google.com">Google</a> 
<a href='https://www.google.com'>Google</a>

I have found this regex, but it only works with double quotation:

<a href="([^"] )">([^<] )<\/a>

Result:

Match 1: <a href="https://www.google.com">Google</a>
Group 1: https://www.google.com
Group 2: Google

What I want is to detect all of the three ways that I provided with the sample text.

Note: I know that regex shouldn't be used for parsing HTML, but I am using it for a very small use case so it's fine.

CodePudding user response：

Answer is already in comments but posting this since the approach is bit different.

In swift 5.7 & iOS 16 u can use regexBuilder for this.

import RegexBuilder


var link1 = "A regex to match href and extract info <a href=https://www.google.com>Google</a>."
var link2 = "<a href='\"https://www.google.com\">Google</a>"
var link3 = "<a href='https://www.google.com'>Google</a>"

let regex = Regex {
    Capture {
        "https://www."
        ZeroOrMore(.word)
        "."
        ZeroOrMore(.word)
    }

}

if let result1 = try? regex.firstMatch(in: link1) {
    print("link: \(result1.output.1)")
}

if let result2 = try? regex.firstMatch(in: link2) {
    print("link: \(result2.output.1)")
}

if let result3 = try? regex.firstMatch(in: link3) {
    print("link: \(result3.output.1)")
}

This work well for the above 3 provided strings. But depend on the scenarios u might need to change the implementation.

CodePudding user response：

assuming there is no other attribute in anchor tags in the file you wish to parse, you can use the following regex : /<a href=('|"|)([^'">] )\1>([^<] )<\/a>/$2 $3/gm.

It first captures either single quote, double quote or nothing and then \1 recalls that capturing group, watch it live here on regex101.