Regular Expressions

Involved Joined: Apr 06, 2008 Posts: 484

I have just got the new dreamweaver CS4 and noticed it supports searching and replacing via regular expressions. ( guess whats coming Smile

)

now, I know there are different types of regular expressions (e.g. javascript, php), and I found a couple of tutorials but it seems there written in freaky deaky dutch or some other language my brain cant comprehend Razz

anyway I thought it could save me massive amounts of time, especially with w3c compliancy.

For e.g. I could search for image tags with no alt tag and insert one Smile

so that being said does anyone know what expression I would use for the following;

I want to find:

Code:




<img src=\"images/image_down.jpg\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\">

and replace with:

Code:




<img src=\"images/image_down.jpg\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" alt=\"\" />

I hope this makes sense as I can just waffle off in all directions lol

oh and I would like an answer with in ten minutes..............Or whenever it suits you Laughing

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:27 pm

http://www.funduc.com/regexp.htm

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:48 pm

After some more searching it seems that will not help Sad

but thanks palbin

I found some examples that people are using

to replace:

Code:




<b></b>

with:

Code:




<strong></strong>

you would use the following:

In the find box you type:

Code:




<bb( [^>]*)[>]|<(/)b>

And in the replace box you type

Code:




<$2strong$1>

Here is another example

Find Box: &()
Replace Box: &$1

Here is a nice little pack I found with some working examples

http://www.somerandomdude.net/files/dwr/dreamweaver-regular-expressions.zip

make sense to anyone else lol

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

http://www.regexbuddy.com/

Don't leave home w/o it Wink

. There are also a couple of freebies out there but RegexBuddy is well worth the money Smile

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:36 pm

testy1, take any of my advice at your own risk Smile

I'm not sure exactly how dreamweaver works but try this:
Find:
(<img src=.* width=.* height=.*)(>)
Replace:
\1 alt=\"\"\2

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:24 am

mmmm didnt find anything Sad

and I was so excited lol

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:27 am

That works in notepad++ so I'm not sure what to tell you.

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:28 am

Palbin wrote:

That works in notepad++ so I'm not sure what to tell you.

you could tell me you figured it out Laughing

thanks raven Ill check that one out

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:32 am

Did you check the box at the bottom that says "use regular expression" or something liek that?

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:52 am

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/regular_expressions.html

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:51 am

yer thanks palbin....been reading it for the last hour or so Sad

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 12:28 am

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh who is the dumbass that thought up regex Sad

I finally figured out how to find image tags without the xhtml closing and add it

Find: <img([^>]+)(\s*[^\/])>
Replace: <img$1$2 />

Im not even gonna look at finding image tags with out the alt attribute yet Smile

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:45 pm

Raven wrote:

http://www.regexbuddy.com/

Don't leave home w/o it Wink

. There are also a couple of freebies out there but RegexBuddy is well worth the money Smile

This freeware versions is well worth the download!
http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/

As for find/replace IMG, HR, INPUT and BR

Code:

preg_replace('#<(br|hr|img|input)(((?!/>)[^>])*)>#', '<img$1$2 />', $str);

Edit: Easy one below

Code:

<(br|hr|img|input)([^>]*[^/])?>

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 6:51 pm

I ended up getting the one raven suggested.Although the dreamweaver setup seems to be slightly different but It will still come in handy.

The image one I posted above did a complete nuke site 23 seconds Smile

The potential for time saving here is massive, Even if you spend a long time developing the expressions.I would eventually like a heap of expressions I can run to make the site compliant, This could turn a 6+ hour job into about 4 minutes.

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 8:05 pm

Testy1 wrote:

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh who is the dumbass that thought up regex :Sad:

Care to rethink your position? Wink

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 8:11 pm

I knew that would come back to bite me lol

Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 4:35 am

Don't forget there are some things you do not want to be arbitrarily changing.
One example is changing & for & amp - if it is within jabbascript that might cause a problem. hr is another one. You could use a regex to to make it an auto close tag hr / but you have no way of anticipating whether or not the original code had some tags closed or some left un closed. I guess you could cheat and just auto close all opening hr tags and then remove and normal hr closing tags but that really is being idle Smile

I prefer to use jEdit as you can write your own macro's to handle things like this.

Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 11:36 am

hr has no ending tag any HTML editor that thinks so is bad Razz

Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 12:13 pm

XHTML requires it <hr /> Wink

Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 5:12 pm

Guardian2003, Im not really sure how dreamweaver works yet but I can find image tags with no closing by using the following

Find: <img([^>]+)(\s*[^\/]"|')>

I have enhanced the query using the pipe command or vertical line | as it acts as OR so now it will find any image tags that end with '> OR "> but hr maybe a bit more difficult Sad

I can also use the advanced text feature to find any tag I like, I can then select a specific attribute if I want that is or is not present with in that tag i.e. all image tags without the alt attribute.

hope that makes sense Smile

Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 5:12 pm

ehm testy i already posted:

Code:

<(hr|img|br|input)((?!/>)[^>])*>

I use the free "kregexpeditor" in KDE (GNU/Linux)
Sorry, screenshot is in the dutch language (forgot to switch languages)

For an even more advanced version use:

Code:

<(hr|img|br|input)((?!/\s*>)[^>])*>

This one also matches <br / > where space is between the slash and closing character.

Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 6:03 pm

argh ok somehow I missed it Sad

it should be like this though

Find: <(br|hr|img|input)(((?!/>)[^>])*)>
Replace: <$1$2 />

other wise for e.g. it would find <hr> and replace it with <imghr />

registered · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:44 am

djmaze, thanks for the "kregexpeditor" hint as I just recently switched to Ubuntu and hadn't gotten to finding a replacement for RegXBuddy. I will definitely be giving this editor a try... Wink

Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 6:18 am

Not sure if that one will work for you M as it's KDE rather than Gnome so if it doesn't there is always visual-regexp

Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 6:20 am

It does work with the right libraries... But, now you've got me interested in another one. Wink

Thanks.