Extracts all sub strings between string separators in a string (C#)

Question

I'm trying to parse content of a string to see if the string includes urls, to convert the full string to html, to make the string clickable.

I'm not sure if there is a smarter way of doing this, but I started trying creating a parser with the Split method for strings, or Regex.Split in C#. But I can't find a good way of doing it.

(It is a ASP.NET MVC application, so perhaps there is some smarter way of doing this)

I want to ex. convert the string;

"Customer office is responsible for this. Contact info can be found {link}{www.customerservice.com}{here!}{link} More info can be found {link}{www.customerservice.com/moreinfo}{here!}{link}"

Into

"Customer office is responsible for this. Contact info can be found <a href=www.customerservice.com>here!</a> More info can be found <a href=www.customerservice.com/moreinfo>here!</a>"

i.e.

{link}{url}{text}{link} --> <a href=url>text</a>

Anyone have a good suggestion? I can also change the way the input string is formatted.

try to use some template engine, here are few: http://stackoverflow.com/a/340243/351383 — Antonio Bakula, May 20 '15 at 12:37

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 20 '15 at 12:38

You can use the following to match:

{link}{([^}]*)}{([^}]*)}{link}

And replace with:

<a href=$1>$2</a>

See DEMO

Explanation:

{link} match {link} literally
{([^}]*)} match all characters except } in capturing group 1 (for url)
{([^}]*)} match all characters except } in capturing group 2 (for value)
{link} match {link} literally again

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 20 '15 at 12:40

0

you can use regex as

{link}{(.*?)}{(.*?)}{link}

and substution as

<a href=\1>\2</a>

Regex

answered May 20 '15 at 12:40

Rahul

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 20 '15 at 12:40

0

For your simple link format {link}{url}{text} you can use simple Regex.Replace:

Regex.Replace(input, @"\{link\}\{([^}]*)\}\{([^}]*)\}", @"<a href=""$1"">$2</a>");

answered May 20 '15 at 12:40

Mark Shevchenko

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 20 '15 at 13:03

Also this non-regex idea may help

var input = "Customer office is responsible for this. Contact info can be found {link}{www.customerservice.com}{here!}{link} More info can be found {link}{www.customerservice.com/moreinfo}{here!}{link}";

var output = input.Replace("{link}{", "<a href=")
                  .Replace("}{link}", "</a>")
                  .Replace("}{", ">");

Extracts all sub strings between string separators in a string (C#)

4 Answers4