Java - how to print inside ANY HTML tag using regex matcher and pattern

Question

I am writing a console command to print what is inside ANY HTML tag that the user desires. The command goes like this:

ALL <tag>

Where <tag> is for example <b> and the programs job is to look at an HTML code and write ONLY what is inside of that tag.

Example of a HTML code:

<html>
   <head>
      <title>Sample "Hello, World" Application</title>
   </head>
   <body bgcolor=white>
      <table border="0" cellpadding="10">
         <tr>
            <td>
               <img src="images/springsource.png">
            </td>
            <td>
               <h1>Sample "Hello, World" kraljivan488@gmail.com</h1>
            </td>
         </tr>
      </table>
      <p>This is the home page for the HelloWorld blaz13@gmail.com </p>
      <p>To prove that they work, you can execute either of the 192.168.1.1</p>
      <ul>
         <li>To a <a href="hello.jsp">JSP page</a>.</li>
         <li>To a <a href="hello">servlet</a>.</li>
      </ul>
   </body>
</html>

And it has to be regex, because there is also a console command to write what regex this command uses.

I use "<tag.*<\\/tag>". It also prints the tags.

What regex do I need to use?

1) regex can't "print" anything. 2) You shouldn't use regex to process HTML. 3) If you insist, try something like `(?s)(.*?)` if looking for `` content. See [regex101](https://regex101.com/r/qyQVTk/1) for demo. — Andreas, Mar 25 '17 at 16:55
possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7167279/regex-select-all-text-between-tags — Japu_D_Cret, Mar 25 '17 at 17:01
If you use regex, this is going to fail miserably if you have commented out parts in your HTML, or Javascript that includes strings which include the required HTML tags, or nested tags. Use an HTML parser. — RealSkeptic, Mar 25 '17 at 17:23

Trash Can · Answer 1 · 2017-03-25T17:05:12.227

0

Try this

String regex = "<" + tag + "([^>]+?)"

So what it does it matches againt the start of the tag and when it encouters the first >, stop and remembers everything inside the tag which is the result you want, you just need to process the match to extract the result.

Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(regex).matcher(yourString);
String result = matcher.group(1); // our capturing in the regex

edited Mar 25 '17 at 17:05

answered Mar 25 '17 at 16:58

Trash Can

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It seems the OP is interested in what's between the opening and the closing tag. As in `content` - they want the "content" part. – RealSkeptic Mar 25 '17 at 17:25
@RealSkeptic I read the question again after youyr comment, I think you are right – Trash Can Mar 25 '17 at 17:36

Java - how to print inside ANY HTML tag using regex matcher and pattern

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