Regex pattern

[Jacob Sonia]

Hi,

I have these example urls
http://twitter.com/*
http://twitter.com/*/rs

Now * can be anything like user_name, user.name etc

I could come up with only one pattern of extracting but it returns / as well when it is present. Please help me with a more correct one.

This is my java program

  

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;


public class UserNamePatternCheck {

	/**
	 * @param args
	 */
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		String userName = null;
		 Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(?<=http[s]?://twitter.com/)($|(.*)/|(.*)|\\?=)");
		Matcher m = p.matcher("https://twitter.com/bc");
		while (m.find()) {
			userName = m.group();
            break;
        }
		System.out.println("userName" + userName);
	}

}
  

[Rob Spoor]

Let's break down your regex:
- (?<=http[s]?://twitter.com/) - a positive lookbehind for http://twitter.com/ and https://twitter.com/. Looks fine to me
- ($|(.*)/|(.*)|\\?=)
--- $ - end of string
--- (.*)/ - anything followed by /
--- (.*) - anything
--- \\?= - a ? followed by =

You clearly specify that you want / inside your match, both in (.*) and in (.*)/
An easy fix: change both occurrences of .* into [^/]*. In other words, anything but a /. That still means you match anything but a / followed by a /, so remove that part. What remains: "(?<=http[s]?://twitter.com/)($|([^/]*)|\\?=)"

By the way, your while loop is actually an if-loop because of the break. So just change it into one.

[Jacob Sonia]

Hey thanks a lot for the reply, it really helped me. Please guide me what book should i read for understanding the basics of regex pattern.

Also i have this problem - Here i want everything after http://abc.com* except http://abc.com/xyz* - means all would be accepted which starts with http://abc.com but the one which starts with http://abc.com/xyz will not be accepted. I tried this, but i think this is not that great, there is some problem to it,it doesn't match the last one.

    import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;


public class patterncheck{

	/**
	 * @param args
	 */
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		checkSiteMatched("http://www.abc.com/");
		checkSiteMatched("http://www.abc.com/xyz/edhfkldhfg");
		checkSiteMatched("http://www.abc.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls");
		checkSiteMatched("http://www.abc.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official");

	}
	
	public static boolean checkSiteMatched(String content) {
        System.out.println("Testing url " + content);
    	  String username = null;
        String regex ="^http:\\/\\/[\\w-]+\\.abc\\.(ae|com)($|[^xyz]*|\\?=)" ;
        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(content);
        System.out.println(matcher.matches());
        return matcher.matches();
    }

}

[Raymond Tong]

There is some url above regular expression
http://www.regular-expressions.info/
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/regex/

String regex ="^http:\\/\\/[\\w-]+\\.abc\\.(ae|com)($|[^xyz]*|\\?=)" ;

This will fail for

checkSiteMatched("http://abc.com/");
checkSiteMatched("http://www.abc.com_");

You don't have to escape "/" by using "\\/", simply "/" is ok
if sub-domain (www) is optional, you may want to use "?"
you may want to have a slash "/" after your (ae|com)

It may be easier for you to write down the pattern using pen and paper
before turning it to regular expression.

[Rob Spoor]

Jacob Sonia wrote:Also i have this problem - Here i want everything after http://abc.com* except http://abc.com/xyz* - means all would be accepted which starts with http://abc.com but the one which starts with http://abc.com/xyz will not be accepted.

Check out java.util.regex.Pattern for negative lookahead. What you basically need:
- http://abc.com
- a negative lookahead for /xyz
- anything else

[Jacob Sonia]

Hi, I tried this after looking at java.util.pattern

String regex ="^http:\\/\\/[\\w-]+\\.abc\\.(com)($|[.* && ?![xyz]*])" ;

Doesn't work either

[Raymond Tong]

Jacob Sonia wrote:Hi, I tried this after looking at java.util.pattern

String regex ="^http:\\/\\/[\\w-]+\\.abc\\.(com)($|[.* && ?![xyz]*])" ;

Doesn't work either

Here is more details description for regular expression
http://www.regular-expressions.info/lookaround.html

[Jacob Sonia]

another try String regex ="^http:\\/\\/[\\w-]+\\.abc\\.(ae|com)($|(?!(/xyz).*).*)" ;

[Rob Spoor]

You should always check the Javadocs of java.util.regex.Pattern for the syntax. I see you're using a !, but that's not supported in Java. I already told you how to do this, using the negative lookahead.

[Jacob Sonia]

Hi,
But whatever I created is supported. Why do you think that ! Is not supported. For me the pattern works as expected.