asked on

ASP RegEx to Split Apart an Anchor Tag

Hello,
I'm looking for a a few regular expressions that I can use to split apart an anchor tag (ie. href, alt, target, link text, etc)

For example:
<a href="http://www.blah.com" alt=blah target='_blank'>MyText</a> (attributes may or may not be wrapped in quotes)

To pull the target out, I'm using the following expression:

RegEx.Pattern="(^|.*\s)*target=(.*)[\s\S*=.*^>]|[>.*<.*]"
strTarget=RegEx.Replace(strLink, "$2")
strTarget=Trim(Replace(strTarget, """", ""))

It only works in some scenarios. I need it to work if target is the first, middle, last attribute in the tag. And need to do the same thing for the href, alt, etc.

Thanks in advance!
John

WMIF

it appears that you have already singled out the anchor tags and you only want the information about each of the attributes, is that correct? i would just like to clarify before i dig in.

jlm151

ASKER

Yep

clockwatcher

Are you actually trying to strip the attributes out or are you just trying to find their values? Your question seems like you just want to find the values. But, then you went with a replace? Anyway, if you're just looking to find the values then:

<%

function GetAttr(attrib, tag)

dim retval

dim r
set r = new RegExp
r.pattern = attrib & "=\s*?['""]?(.*?)['""\s>]"
r.global = true
r.ignorecase = true

dim matches
set matches = r.execute(strLink)
if matches.count > 0 then
retval = matches(0).SubMatches(0)
end if

GetAttr = retval

end function

strLink = "<a href=""http://www.blah.com"" alt=blah target='_blank'>MyText</a> (attributes may or may not be wrapped in quotes)"

find = Array("href","alt","target")

for i = lbound(find) to ubound(find)
response.write find(i) & " -- " & GetAttr(find(i),strLink) & "<BR>"
next
%>

clockwatcher

Sorry that pattern should be changed to:

r.pattern = attrib & "=\s*?['""]?(.*?)['""][\s>]"

Made a change to shorten it up a bit when I posted and forgot why I had it set originally.

Also it assumes you've got a single anchor tag and returns the first attribute match. In other words, if you've got some funky tags:

<a href="here" href="there">href=where</a>

And you're search for href, you'll only get back the first match -- which in this case would be 'here'.

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clockwatcher

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jlm151

ASKER

still no dice...but I'll have to admit your regex is alot cleaner and makes more sense than mine. I'll keep toying around with it.

jlm151

ASKER

found my problem, spaces between the attribute and the "=" sign. Altered the regex to:
r.pattern = attrib & "\s*=(?:\s*['""](.*?)['""])|" & attrib & "\s*=(?:\s*(.*?)[\s>]+)"

I reaaallly appreciated your help ClockWatcher....learned something new about regular expressions :-)

Thanks again!