java regex

stephenlane80

I need two java regex expressions to parse the anchor text and url from a http link like this: "<a href="http://www.example.com/chapter2.html">chapter two</a>"

so what i want to be left with is
url: http://www.example.com/chapter2.html
anchor: chapter two

I have something like this for the url : "http://[a-zA-Z_0-9.-&/+=]+&quot;

it works for simple urls but exotic characters mess it up, alos im using the " at the end to end the match, don't think this is the best way

I have ">[a-zA-Z_0-9[\\W]]+<a/>" for the anchor, but they don''t seen to cover each eventually, has any one got a set that would handle any permutation ?

IRLConor

Untested:

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<a\s+.*?href=(?:\"(.*?)\"|'(.*?)').*?>(.*?)</a>");
Matcher m = p.matcher(theStringToSearch);
if (m.matches()) {
    String anchorText = m.group(3);
    String url = m.group(1);
    if (url == null) {
        url = m.group(2);
    }
}

stephenlane80

thanx, i will try it this afternoon, but it looks pretty good