{"id":5071,"date":"2022-08-26T09:41:49","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T04:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jassweb.com\/solved\/solved-regex-to-match-anchor-tag-and-its-href\/"},"modified":"2022-08-26T09:41:49","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T04:11:49","slug":"solved-regex-to-match-anchor-tag-and-its-href","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jassweb.com\/solved\/solved-regex-to-match-anchor-tag-and-its-href\/","title":{"rendered":"[Solved] Regex to match anchor tag and its href"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"answer-43815805\" class=\"answer js-answer accepted-answer js-accepted-answer\" data-answerid=\"43815805\" data-parentid=\"43814906\" data-score=\"3\" data-position-on-page=\"1\" data-highest-scored=\"1\" data-question-has-accepted-highest-score=\"1\" itemprop=\"acceptedAnswer\" itemscope itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/Answer\">\n<div class=\"post-layout\">\n<div class=\"votecell post-layout--left\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"answercell post-layout--right\">\n<div class=\"s-prose js-post-body\" itemprop=\"text\">\n<p>First of all, you need to learn the basic syntax of the <code>pattern<\/code> of <code>NSRegularExpression<\/code>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>pattern<\/code> does not contain delimiters<\/li>\n<li><code>pattern<\/code> does not contain modifiers, you need to pass such info as <code>options<\/code><\/li>\n<li>When you want to use meta-character <code>\\<\/code>, you need to escape it as <code>\\\\<\/code> in Swift String.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, the line creating an instance of <code>NSRegularExpression<\/code> should be something like this:<\/p>\n<pre><code>let regex = try NSRegularExpression(pattern: \"&lt;([a-z]*)\\\\b[^&gt;]*&gt;(.*?)&lt;\/\\\\1&gt;\", options: .caseInsensitive)\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>But, as you may already know, your pattern does not contain any code to match <code>href<\/code> or capture its value.<\/p>\n<p>Something like this would work with your example <code>html<\/code>:<\/p>\n<pre><code>let pattern = \"&lt;a\\\\b[^&gt;]*\\\\bhref\\\\s*=\\\\s*(\\\"[^\\\"]*\\\"|'[^']*')[^&gt;]*&gt;((?:(?!&lt;\/a).)*)&lt;\/a\\\\s*&gt;\"\nlet regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: .caseInsensitive)\nlet html = \"&lt;p&gt;This is a simple text with some embedded &lt;a\\n\" +\n    \"href=\\\"http:\/\/example.com\/link\/to\/some\/page?param1=77&amp;param2=22\\\"&gt;links&lt;\/a&gt;.\\n\" +\n    \"This is a &lt;a href=\\\"https:\/\/exmp.le\/sample-page\/?uu=1\\\"&gt;different link&lt;\/a&gt;.\"\nlet matches = regex.matches(in: html, options: [], range: NSRange(0..&lt;html.utf16.count))\nvar resultDict: [String: String] = [:]\nfor match in matches {\n    let hrefRange = NSRange(location: match.rangeAt(1).location+1, length: match.rangeAt(1).length-2)\n    let innerTextRange = match.rangeAt(2)\n    let href = (html as NSString).substring(with: hrefRange)\n    let innerText = (html as NSString).substring(with: innerTextRange)\n    resultDict[innerText] = href\n}\nprint(resultDict)\n\/\/-&gt;[\"different link\": \"https:\/\/exmp.le\/sample-page\/?uu=1\", \"links\": \"http:\/\/example.com\/link\/to\/some\/page?param1=77&amp;param2=22\"]\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Remember, my <code>pattern<\/code> above may mistakenly detect ill-formed a-tags or miss some nested structure, also it lacks feature to work with HTML character entities&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>If you want to make your code more robust and generic, you&#8217;d better consider adopting HTML parsers as suggested by ColGraff and Rob.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"mt24\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>            <span class=\"d-none\" itemprop=\"commentCount\"><\/span> <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<\/p>\n<p>solved Regex to match anchor tag and its href <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] First of all, you need to learn the basic syntax of the pattern of NSRegularExpression: pattern does not contain delimiters pattern does not contain modifiers, you need to pass such info as options When you want to use meta-character \\, you need to escape it as \\\\ in Swift String. So, the line creating &#8230; <a title=\"[Solved] Regex to match anchor tag and its href\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/jassweb.com\/solved\/solved-regex-to-match-anchor-tag-and-its-href\/\" aria-label=\"More on [Solved] Regex to match anchor tag and its href\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[1231,347,522],"class_list":["post-5071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solved","tag-nsregularexpression","tag-regex","tag-swift"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>[Solved] Regex to match anchor tag and its href - JassWeb<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jassweb.com\/solved\/solved-regex-to-match-anchor-tag-and-its-href\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"[Solved] Regex to match anchor tag and its href - JassWeb\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[ad_1] First of all, you need to learn the basic syntax of the pattern of NSRegularExpression: pattern does not contain delimiters pattern does not contain modifiers, you need to pass such info as options When you want to use meta-character , you need to escape it as \\ in Swift String. 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