I need to find out, whether in an array there is a specific HTML code. The array contains HTML codes and I need to get a number, that is included in a link.
This would be what I am searching for (the number 10 ist the number I want):
class = "active" href = "http://www.example.com/something-10
So I tried the following using preg_match:
if(preg_match('/class = "active" href = "http://www.example.com/something-(.*)/',$array["crawler"],$arr)) { print_r($arr,true); }
Unfortunately this will give me nothing as result. So I guess, something is wrong with my preg_match. I allready checked all the manuals, but I still dont get what I am doing wrong.
Could someone help me with this? Thank you!
phpheini
Aside from advising you to not parse HTML using regular expressions, your particular regular expression needs different delimiters:
preg_match('~class = "active" href = "http://www\.example\.com/something-(\d+)~', ...)
Alternatively, you could have escaped the slashes within the regex, but that leads to LSS (leaning slash syndrome):
preg_match('/class = "active" href = "http:\/\/www\.example\.com\/something-(.*)/', ...)
And that's just ugly.
You should have gotten an error, if your error_reporting is turned on.
Related
I struggle to find a solution for what is probably pretty simple, and despite I crawl a lot of questions, I can't manage to make it work.
Here are 2 HTML elements:
Test1
Test2
I want to get ONLY the content of the 1st element's href property (#content1). It must match because the html element contains no "onclick" property.
This regex works for matching the 1st element only:
^<a href="#"((?!onclick).)*$
but I can't figure out how to get the HREF content.
I've tried this:
^<a href="#(.*)"((?!onclick).)*$
but in this case, both elements are matching.
Thanks for your help !
I strongly suggest that you should do that in two steps. For one thing, parsing arbitrary html with a regexp is a notoriously slippery and winding road. For the other: there is no achievement in doing everything with one illegible regex.
And there's more to it: "contains no "onclick" attribute" is not the same as "href attribute is not directly followed by onclick attribute". So, a one-regex-solution would be either very complicated or very fragile (html tags have arbitrary attributes order).
var a = [
'Test1',
'Test2'
];
console.log(
a.filter(i => i.match(/onclick/i) == null)
.map(i => i.match(/href="([^"]+)"/i)[1]
)
This assumes that your href attribute values are valid and do not contain quotes (which is, of course, technically possible).
Regex is not made for this. JavaScript would work better. This code will store an array of the hrefs matching your requirements in the variable hrefArray.
var hrefArray = [];
for (var elem of document.getElementsByTagName('a')) {
if (elem.onclick) hrefArray.push(elem.href)
}
An example with your HTML is in the snippet below:
var hrefArray = [];
for (var elem of document.getElementsByTagName('a')) {
if (elem.onclick) hrefArray.push(elem.href)
}
console.log(hrefArray);
body {
background-color: gray;
}
Test1
Test2
I'm looking to match a part of several HTML files that get passed into a loop in an ASP file and then return that part of the HTML files to include in my output. Here's my code so far:
<%for i=0 to uBound(fileIDs) ' fileIDs is an array of URLs
dim srcText, outText, url
Set ex = New RegExp
ex.Global = true
ex.IgnoreCase = true
ex.Pattern = "<section>[\S\s]+</section>" ' This finds the HTML I want
url = fileIDs(i)
Set xmlhttp = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
xmlhttp.open "GET", url, false
xmlhttp.send ""
srcText = xmlhttp.responseText
outputText = ex.Execute(mediaSrcText) ' I expect this to be the HTML I want
Response.Write(outputText.Item(0).Value) ' This would then return the first instance
set xmlhttp = nothing
next %>
I've tested the regular expression on my files and it's matching the parts that I want it to.
when I run the page containing this code, I get an error:
Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01b6'
Object doesn't support this property or method
on the line with ex.Execute. I've also tried ex.Match, but got the same error. So I'm clearly missing the proper method for returning the match so I can write it out into the file. What is that method? Or am I approaching the problem from the wrong direction?
Thanks!
You need a Set when you're assigning outputText:
Set outputText = ex.Execute(mediaSrcText)
I should probably also say that you really shouldn't be using regular expressions to attempt to parse HTML, although I don't know enough about the context to offer more specific advice.
I want to retrieve all links from the page, where link text is in the below format.
(10) Now I tried using below method but it didn't work.
There are many similar links available on the same page where number is not in sequence and also there are many repeated numbers for the link text, so I want to first collect such web element and then using attribute I can get the URL.
Similar to this page.
http://www.dmoz.org/search?q=surat&start=0&type=more&all=no&cat=
I want the link after we click on those numbers present in the bracket.
List<WebElement> catLinks = driver.findElements(By.xpath("//html/body/div[#id='doc']/div[#id='bd-cross']/ol/li[1]/a[2]"));
for (WebElement catLink : catLinks) {
System.out.println(nLink + ". " + catLink.getAttribute("href"));
}
Link XPath is:
//html/body/div[#id='doc']/div[#id='bd-cross']/ol/li[***1***]/a[2]
Using Above XPath I can get the first link URL. Now What I can do to get all links URL.
I tried using regexp :
//html/body/div[#id='doc']/div[#id='bd-cross']/ol/li[\\d\\.\\*]/a[2]
But it is not working.
I also tried using below method.
List<WebElement> catLinks = driver.findElements(By.linkText("\\d\.\*"));
for (WebElement catLink : catLinks) {
System.out.println(nLink + ". " + catLink.getAttribute("href"));
}
but no luck.
Now What I can do to get all links
URL.
I triedn using regex :
//html/body/div[#id='doc']/div[#id='bd-cross']/ol/li[\\d\\.\\*]/a[2]
Nop. Use:
/html/body/div[#id='doc']/div[#id='bd-cross']/ol/li/a[2]
Less is more.
You don't need to include the /html/body/ in the xpath locator, this will just make it more fragile if the page structure changes. Try this much simpler xpath locator: id('bd-cross')//li/a[2]
Does someone have a regular expression that gets a link to a Youtube video (not embedded object) from (almost) all the possible ways of linking to Youtube?
I think this is a pretty common problem and I'm sure there are a lot of ways to link that.
A starting point would be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA&feature=related
http://youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
http://youtu.be/n17B_uFF4cA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r5nB9u4jjy4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ZRX8984sc
http://youtu.be/t-ZRX8984sc
... please add more possible links and/or regular expressions to detect them.
So far I got this Regular expression working for the examples I posted, and it gets the ID on the first group:
http(?:s?):\/\/(?:www\.)?youtu(?:be\.com\/watch\?v=|\.be\/)([\w\-\_]*)(&(amp;)?[\w\?=]*)?
You can use this expression below.
(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?youtu\.?be(?:\.com)?\/?.*(?:watch|embed)?(?:.*v=|v\/|\/)([\w\-_]+)\&?
I'm using it, and it cover the most used URLs.
I'll keep updating it on This Gist.
You can test it on this tool.
I like #brunodles's solution the most but you can still match non video links like https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
I went with this solution
(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?youtu(?:\.be\/|be.com\/\S*(?:watch|embed)(?:(?:(?=\/[-a-zA-Z0-9_]{11,}(?!\S))\/)|(?:\S*v=|v\/)))([-a-zA-Z0-9_]{11,})
It can also be used to match multiple whitespace separated links.
The video id will be captured in the first group.
Tested with the following urls:
youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoBL33GT9S8&feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/embed/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iwGFalTRHDA
https://www.youtube.com/embed/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
https://www.youtube.com/embed/v=iwGFalTRHDA
https://www.youtube.com/watch/iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?u=/watch?v=aGmiw_rrNxk&feature=share
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
// will not match
https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgc00bfF_PvO_2AvqJZHXFg
https://www.youtube.com/c/NatGeoEdOrg/videos
https://regex101.com/r/rq2KLv/1
I improved the links posted above with a friend for a script I wrote for IRC to recognize even links without http at all. It worked on all stress tests I got so far, including garbled text with barely recognizable youtube urls, so here it is:
~(?:https?://)?(?:www\.)?youtu(?:be\.com/watch\?(?:.*?&(?:amp;)?)?v=|\.be/)([\w\-]+)(?:&(?:amp;)?[\w\?=]*)?~
I testet all the regular expressions that are shown here and none could cover all url types that my client was using.
I built this pretty much through trial and error, but it seems to work with all the patterns that Poppy Deejay posted.
"(?:.+?)?(?:\/v\/|watch\/|\?v=|\&v=|youtu\.be\/|\/v=|^youtu\.be\/)([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11})+"
Maybe it helps someone who is in a similar situation that I had today ;)
Piggy backing on Fanmade, this covers the below links including the url encoded version of attribution_links:
(?:.+?)?(?:\/v\/|watch\/|\?v=|\&v=|youtu\.be\/|\/v=|^youtu\.be\/|watch\%3Fv\%3D)([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11})+
https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=tolCzpA7CrY&u=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DMoBL33GT9S8%26feature%3Dshare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoBL33GT9S8&feature=share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA&feature=related
http://youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
www.youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch/iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/v/iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/v/i_GFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-GFalTRHDA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?u=/watch?v=aGmiw_rrNxk&feature=share&a=9QlmP1yvjcllp0h3l0NwuA
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=fF1CWYwxCQ4&u=/watch?v=qYr8opTPSaQ&feature=em-uploademail
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=fF1CWYwxCQ4&feature=em-uploademail&u=/watch?v=qYr8opTPSaQ
I've been having problems lately with the atttribution_link urls so i tried making my own regex that works for those too.
Here is my regex string:
(https?://)?(www\\.)?(yotu\\.be/|youtube\\.com/)?((.+/)?(watch(\\?v=|.+&v=))?(v=)?)([\\w_-]{11})(&.+)?
and here are some test cases i've tried:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA&feature=related
http://youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
www.youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch/iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/v/iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/v/i_GFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-GFalTRHDA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?u=/watch?v=aGmiw_rrNxk&feature=share&a=9QlmP1yvjcllp0h3l0NwuA
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=fF1CWYwxCQ4&u=/watch?v=qYr8opTPSaQ&feature=em-uploademail
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=fF1CWYwxCQ4&feature=em-uploademail&u=/watch?v=qYr8opTPSaQ
Also remember to check the string you get for your video url, sometimes it may get the percent characters. If so just do this
url = [url stringByReplacingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
and it should fix it.
Remember also that the index of the youtube key is now index 9.
NSRange youtubeKey = [result rangeAtIndex:9]; //the youtube key
NSString * strKey = [url substringWithRange:youtubeKey] ;
It'd be the longest RegEx in the world if you managed to cover all link formats, but here's one to get you started which will cover the first couple of link formats:
http://(www\.)?youtube\.com/watch\?.*v=([a-zA-Z0-9]+).*
The second group will match the video ID if you need to get that out.
(?:http?s?:\/\/)?(?:www.)?(?:m.)?(?:music.)?youtu(?:\.?be)(?:\.com)?(?:(?:\w*.?:\/\/)?\w*.?\w*-?.?\w*\/(?:embed|e|v|watch|.*\/)?\??(?:feature=\w*\.?\w*)?&?(?:v=)?\/?)([\w\d_-]{11})(?:\S+)?
https://regex101.com/r/nJzgG0/3
Detects YouTube and YouTube Music link in any string
I took all variants from here:
https://gist.github.com/rodrigoborgesdeoliveira/987683cfbfcc8d800192da1e73adc486#file-youtubeurlformats-txt
And built this regexp (YouTube ID is in group 2):
(\/|%3D|v=|vi=)([0-9A-z-_]{11})[%#?&\s]
Check it here: https://regexr.com/4u4ud
Edit: Works for any single string w/o breaks.
I'm working with that kind of links:
http://www.youtube.com/v/M-faNJWc9T0?fs=1&rel=0
And here's the regEx I'm using to get ID from it:
"(.+?)(\/v/)([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11})+"
This is iterating on the existing answers and handles edge cases better. (for example http://thisisnotyoutu.be/thing)
/(?:https?:\/\/|www\.|m\.|^)youtu(?:be\.com\/watch\?(?:.*?&(?:amp;)?)?v=|\.be\/)([\w\-]+)(?:&(?:amp;)?[\w\?=]*)?/
here is the complete solution for getting youtube video id for java or android, i didn't found any link which doesn't work with this function
public static String getValidYoutubeVideoId(String youtubeUrl)
{
if(youtubeUrl == null || youtubeUrl.trim().contentEquals(""))
{
return "";
}
youtubeUrl = youtubeUrl.trim();
String validYoutubeVideoId = "";
String regexPattern = "^(?:https?:\\/\\/)?(?:[0-9A-Z-]+\\.)?(?:youtu\\.be\\/|youtube\\.com\\S*[^\\w\\-\\s])([\\w\\-]{11})(?=[^\\w\\-]|$)(?![?=&+%\\w]*(?:['\"][^<>]*>|<\\/a>))[?=&+%\\w]*";
Pattern regexCompiled = Pattern.compile(regexPattern, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher regexMatcher = regexCompiled.matcher(youtubeUrl);
if(regexMatcher.find())
{
try
{
validYoutubeVideoId = regexMatcher.group(1);
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
}
}
return validYoutubeVideoId;
}
This is my answer to use in Scala. This is useful to extract 11 digits from Youtube's URL.
"https?://(?:[0-9a-zA-Z-]+.)?(?:www.youtube.com/|youtu.be\S*[^\w-\s])([\w -]{11})(?=[^\w-]|$)(?![?=&+%\w](?:[\'"][^<>]>|))[?=&+%\w-]*"
def getVideoLinkWR: UserDefinedFunction = udf(f = (videoLink: String) => {
val youtubeRgx = """https?://(?:[0-9a-zA-Z-]+\.)?(?:youtu\.be/|youtube\.com\S*[^\w\-\s])([\w \-]{11})(?=[^\w\-]|$)(?![?=&+%\w]*(?:[\'"][^<>]*>|</a>))[?=&+%\w-./]*""".r
videoLink match {
case youtubeRgx(a) => s"$a".toString
case _ => videoLink.toString
}
}
Youtube video URL Change to iframe supported link:
REGEX: https://regex101.com/r/LeZ9WH/2/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA&feature=related
http://youtu.be/iwGFalTRHDA
http://youtu.be/n17B_uFF4cA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r5nB9u4jjy4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ZRX8984sc
http://youtu.be/t-ZRX8984sc
https://youtu.be/2sFlFPmUfNo?t=1
Php function example:
if (!function_exists('clean_youtube_link')) {
/**
* #param $link
* #return string|string[]|null
*/
function clean_youtube_link($link)
{
return preg_replace(
'#(.+?)(\/)(watch\x3Fv=)?(embed\/watch\x3Ffeature\=player_embedded\x26v=)?([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11})+#',
"https://www.youtube.com/embed/$5",
$link
);
}
}
This should work for almost all youtube links when extracting from a string:
((?:https?:)?\/\/)?((?:www|m)\.)?((?:youtube\.com|youtu.be))(\/(?:[\w\-]+\?v=|embed\/|v\/)?)([\w\-]{10}).\b
var isValidYoutubeLink: Bool{
// working for all the youtube url's
NSPredicate(format: "SELF MATCHES %#", "(?:http?s?:\\/\\/)?(?:www.)?(?:m.)?(?:music.)?youtu(?:\\.?be)(?:\\.com)?(?:(?:\\w*.?:\\/\\/)?\\w*.?\\w*-?.?\\w*\\/(?:embed|e|v|watch|.*\\/)?\\??(?:feature=\\w*\\.?\\w*)?&?(?:v=)?\\/?)([\\w\\d_-]{11})(?:\\S+)?").evaluate(with: self)
}
With this Javascript Regex, the first capture is a video ID :
^(?:https?:)?(?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?(?:youtu\.be\/|youtube(?:\-nocookie)?\.(?:[A-Za-z]{2,4}|[A-Za-z]{2,3}\.[A-Za-z]{2})\/)(?:watch|embed\/|vi?\/)*(?:\?[\w=&]*vi?=)?([^#&\?\/]{11}).*$
(?-s)^https?\W+(?:www\.|m\.|music\.)*youtu\.?be(?:\.com|\/watch|\/o?embed|\/shorts|\/attribution_link\?[&\w\-=]*[au]=|\/ytsc\w+|[\?&\/]+[ve]i?\b|\?feature=\w+|-nocookie)*[\/=]([a-z\d\-_]{11})[\?&#% \t ] *.*$
or
(?-s)^(?:(?!https?[:\/]|www\.|m\.yo|music\.yo|youtu\.?be[\/\.]|watch[\/\?]|embed\/)\V)*(?:https?[:\/]+|www\.|m\.|music\.)+youtu\.?be(?:\.com\/|watch|o?embed(?:\/|\?url=\S+?)?|shorts|attribution_link\?[&\w\-=]*[au]=\/?|ytsc\w+|[\?&]*[ve]i?\b|\?feature=\w+|[\?&]time_continue=\d+|-nocookie|%[23][56FD])*(?:[\/=]|%2F|%3D)([a-z\d\-_]{11})[\?&#% \t ]? *.*$
(the part >>#% \t⠀ ]<< should contain continuous space, which is Alt+255, but stackoverflow-com can't print it)
(this string may be replaced to \1, sorted and abbreviated with: )
V█(?-i)^([A-Za-z\d\-_]{11})(?:\v+\1)*$
>█https:\/\/youtu\.be\/\1
(./dot can take up any symbol; \V or [^\r\n] can any except special, emoji and others; this >> [^!-⠀：／‽｜\s] << can grab some emoji)
https://youtu.be/x26ANNC3C-8 • ♾ 𝕳𝕰𝕽𝕰𝕿𝕳𝕰𝖄𝕮𝕺𝕸𝕰 - 𝔩𝔢𝔞𝔳𝔢 𝔪𝔢 𝔞𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔢 • 7:15
This regex solve my problem, I can get youtube link having watch, embed or shared link
(?:http(?:s)?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?(?:youtu\.be\/|youtube\.com\/(?:(?:watch)?\?(?:.*&)?v(?:i)?=|(?:embed|v|vi|user)\/))([^\?&\"'<> #]+)
You can check here https://regex101.com/r/Kvk0nB/1
I'm using selenium RC and I would like, for example, to get all the links elements with attribute href that match:
http://[^/]*\d+com
I would like to use:
sel.get_attribute( '//a[regx:match(#href, "http://[^/]*\d+.com")]/#name' )
which would return a list of the name attribute of all the links that match the regex.
(or something like it)
thanks
The answer above is probably the right way to find ALL of the links that match a regex, but I thought it'd also be helpful to answer the other part of the question, how to use regex in Xpath locators. You need to use the regex matches() function, like this:
xpath=//div[matches(#id,'che.*boxes')]
(this, of course, would click the div with 'id=checkboxes', or 'id=cheANYTHINGHEREboxes')
Be aware, though, that the matches function is not supported by all native browser implementations of Xpath (most conspicuously, using this in FF3 will throw an error: invalid xpath[2]).
If you have trouble with your particular browser (as I did with FF3), try using Selenium's allowNativeXpath("false") to switch over to the JavaScript Xpath interpreter. It'll be slower, but it does seem to work with more Xpath functions, including 'matches' and 'ends-with'. :)
You can use the Selenium command getAllLinks to get an array of the ids of links on the page, which you could then loop through and check the href using the getAttribute, which takes the locator followed by an # and the attribute name. For example in Java this might be:
String[] allLinks = session().getAllLinks();
List<String> matchingLinks = new ArrayList<String>();
for (String linkId : allLinks) {
String linkHref = selenium.getAttribute("id=" + linkId + "#href");
if (linkHref.matches("http://[^/]*\\d+.com")) {
matchingLinks.add(link);
}
}
A possible solution is to use sel.get_eval() and write a JS script that returns a list of the links. something like the following answer:
selenium: Is it possible to use the regexp in selenium locators
Here's some alternate methods as well for Selenium RC. These aren't pure Selenium solutions, they allow interaction with your programming language data structures and Selenium.
You can also get get HTML page source, then regular expression the source to return a match set of links. Use regex grouping to separate out URLs, link text/ID, etc. and you can then pass them back to selenium to click on or navigate to.
Another method is get HTML page source or innerHTML (via DOM locators) of a parent/root element then convert the HTML to XML as DOM object in your programming language. You can then traverse the DOM with desired XPath (with regular expression or not), and obtain a nodeset of only the links of interest. From their parse out the link text/ID or URL and you can pass back to selenium to click on or navigate to.
Upon request, I'm providing examples below. It's mixed languages since the post didn't appear to be language specific anyways. I'm just using what I had available to hack together for examples. They aren't fully tested or tested at all, but I've worked with bits of the code before in other projects, so these are proof of concept code examples of how you'd implement the solutions I just mentioned.
//Example of element attribute processing by page source and regex (in PHP)
$pgSrc = $sel->getPageSource();
//simple hyperlink extraction via regex below, replace with better regex pattern as desired
preg_match_all("/<a.+href=\"(.+)\"/",$pgSrc,$matches,PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
//$matches is a 2D array, $matches[0] is array of whole string matched, $matches[1] is array of what's in parenthesis
//you either get an array of all matched link URL values in parenthesis capture group or an empty array
$links = count($matches) >= 2 ? $matches[1] : array();
//now do as you wish, iterating over all link URLs
//NOTE: these are URLs only, not actual hyperlink elements
//Example of XML DOM parsing with Selenium RC (in Java)
String locator = "id=someElement";
String htmlSrcSubset = sel.getEval("this.browserbot.findElement(\""+locator+"\").innerHTML");
//using JSoup XML parser library for Java, see jsoup.org
Document doc = Jsoup.parse(htmlSrcSubset);
/* once you have this document object, can then manipulate & traverse
it as an XML/HTML node tree. I'm not going to go into details on this
as you'd need to know XML DOM traversal and XPath (not just for finding locators).
But this tutorial URL will give you some ideas:
http://jsoup.org/cookbook/extracting-data/dom-navigation
the example there seems to indicate first getting the element/node defined
by content tag within the "document" or source, then from there get all
hyperlink elements/nodes and then traverse that as a list/array, doing
whatever you want with an object oriented approach for each element in
the array. Each element is an XML node with properties. If you study it,
you'd find this approach gives you the power/access that WebDriver/Selenium 2
now gives you with WebElements but the example here is what you can do in
Selenium RC to get similar WebElement kind of capability
*/
Selenium's By.Id and By.CssSelector methods do not support Regex and By.XPath only does where XPath 2.0 is enabled. If you want to use Regex, you can do something like this:
void MyCallingMethod(IWebDriver driver)
{
//Search by ID:
string attrName = "id";
//Regex = 'a number that is 1-10 digits long'
string attrRegex= "[0-9]{1,10}";
SearchByAttribute(driver, attrName, attrRegex);
}
IEnumerable<IWebElement> SearchByAttribute(IWebDriver driver, string attrName, string attrRegex)
{
List<IWebElement> elements = new List<IWebElement>();
//Allows spaces around equal sign. Ex: id = 55
string searchString = attrName +"\\s*=\\s*\"" + attrRegex +"\"";
//Search page source
MatchCollection matches = Regex.Matches(driver.PageSource, searchString, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
//iterate over matches
foreach (Match match in matches)
{
//Get exact attribute value
Match innerMatch = Regex.Match(match.Value, attrRegex);
cssSelector = "[" + attrName + "=" + attrRegex + "]";
//Find element by exact attribute value
elements.Add(driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector(cssSelector)));
}
return elements;
}
Note: this code is untested. Also, you can optimize this method by figuring out a way to eliminate the second search.