Regex matching/text search

[Techno]

Kind of urgent.

Basically I want to find all matches of a particular sequence and extract the values for that and keep going/doing this search until no matches found.

I want to find text in between the tags:

<#some text#>


and get me all matches for me and with the ability to replace the text.

so if I had this string:

hi my name is <#name#> and I like <#userLikes#>


I want to get the tags in that text and replace the tags in the original text with whatever I want

Thanks

[RudiVisser]

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

// Match
Match m = Regex.Match("<#name#>", "\<\#([a-zA-Z]*)\#\>");
if(m.Success) //...
// Replace
string s = Regex.Replace("<#name#>", "\<\#([a-zA-Z]*)\#\>", "WHATEVER");

The Regular Expressions are wrong however you get the idea, that's how you do regular expression searching/matching/replacing in C#.

[Techno]

sure thanks. I am aware of that but need a regex pattern to do what I need it to do I'm not great with regex!

[RudiVisser]

Ohhh sorry my bad... Errrm I'll have a play in RegexTutor and see what I can come up with then edit this post

EDIT: Well I guess that I was nearly there, try this one!

<#([a-zA-Z]*?)#>

[Techno]

thanks! That didnt quite work the .Value gave me just a "<". My string is:

Please find the attachment in this email for <#new_candidate.new_name#>

Thanks!



so need to find the last tag/element (<# text here #>)

[RudiVisser]

Weird, here's what RegexBuddy gave me for iterating over matches and match groups:

try {
    Regex regexObj = new Regex("<#(.*?)#>");
    Match matchResults = regexObj.Match(subjectString);
    while (matchResults.Success) {
        for (int i = 1; i < matchResults.Groups.Count; i++) {
            Group groupObj = matchResults.Groups[i];
            if (groupObj.Success) {
                // matched text: groupObj.Value
                // match start: groupObj.Index
                // match length: groupObj.Length
            } 
        }
        matchResults = matchResults.NextMatch();
    } 
} catch (ArgumentException ex) {
    // Syntax error in the regular expression
}

(By the way, new RegEx in there - "<#(.*?)#>")

[Techno]

Thanks! That almost works. It works fine for this for example:

blah blah 'get field value' blah blah

but still not for:

blah blah <#get field value#> blah blah


im guessing because the < is a regex special character?

[RudiVisser]

Okay try the regex "\<\#(.*?)\#\>". That should work. I read somewhere that you should escape all non-alphanumeric characters that are not being used in a regex match, now I know I should take note of these things.

[nmadd]

That Regex seems to work okay for me. I get both matches.

string str = "hi my name is <#name#> and I like <#userLikes#>";
string exp = "<#(.*?)#>";
MatchCollection matches = Regex.Matches(str, exp);
 
foreach (Match m in matches)
{
    MessageBox.Show(m.ToString());                
}

[RudiVisser]

Of course!

If you used "Match matchResults = regexObj.Match(subjectString);" it would only get the first match, wouldn't it?

Haven't used RegEx in C# much, but at least it works!

[Techno]

sorry I should have posted the code:

public string GetTemplateReplacedValues(string entityID, string originalTemplateText, string openingTag, string closingTag)
		{
			System.Collections.ArrayList entities = new System.Collections.ArrayList();
			FetchData data = new FetchData();
			BusinessLogicManager.CrmSdk.DynamicEntity entity = new BusinessLogicManager.CrmSdk.DynamicEntity();
			string finalReplacedTemplate = String.Empty;
			string regexPattern = openingTag + "(.*?)" + closingTag;


			Regex patternToMatch = new Regex(regexPattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace);
			
			try
			{
				foreach(Match matchFound in patternToMatch.Matches(originalTemplateText))
				{
					string valueFound = matchFound.Value.Replace(openingTag, String.Empty);
					valueFound = valueFound.Replace(closingTag, String.Empty);	
					valueFound = valueFound.Trim().ToLower();

					string[] entityValue = valueFound.Split(new char[]{'.'});

					if (entityValue.Length == 2)
					{					
						entity = data.GetEntityFromCollection(entities, entityValue[0]); 
						if (entity.Name != entityValue[0])
						{
							entity = data.GetDynamicEntity(entityID, null, entityValue[0]);
							if (entity != null)
							{
								if (entities.Contains(entity) == false)
								{
									entities.Add(entity);
								}
							}
						}

						string entityFieldValue = data.GetAttributeFieldValue(entity, entityValue[1], true);
					
						finalReplacedTemplate = Regex.Replace(originalTemplateText, regexPattern, entityFieldValue, RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
					}
				}
			}
			catch (Exception ex)
			{
				BusinessLogicManager.Settings.DoSendErrorEmail("Error whilst applying custom DR template: " + ex.ToString());
			}
			return finalReplacedTemplate;
		}

Parameters I am passing are valued (opening and closing tags: "<#" "#>")

but still no matches for that sequence

[RudiVisser]

Does it work if you have some simple code?

Namely try this in the middle of everything and comment out the rest:

try {
    Regex regexObj = new Regex("<#(.*?)#>");
    Match matchResults = regexObj.Match(subjectString);
    while (matchResults.Success) {
        for (int i = 1; i < matchResults.Groups.Count; i++) {
            Group groupObj = matchResults.Groups[i];
            if (groupObj.Success) {
                messageBox.Show(groupObj.Value);
            } 
        }
        matchResults = matchResults.NextMatch();
    } 
} catch (Exception ex) {
    MessageBox.Show("It broke... ");
}

[Techno]

lol @ exception message. "It broke". LOL.

I will try your suggestion but still dont understand why it works except for <# #> tags. :-/

it works with:

'fieldvalue'
!!fieldvalue!!

but not <#fieldvalue#>

[nmadd]

It seems to be the IgnorePatternWhitespace option and the "#". Try without that option.

Eliminates unescaped white space from the pattern and enables comments marked with #.

[RudiVisser]

Hmm well I did say to try the escaped regex, or is that counted too?

[Techno]

that simple code does work!

and so does mine now after I took out the IgnoreWhitespace option