easy-regex

Usage

This lightweight crate helps you write long regular expressions as readable as possible by making important parts verbose and gives you options to facilitate writing/reading your expressions. It works in combination with the regex crate.

Introduction

It consists of three main methods and plenty of handy functions. Along with already-adjusted combinations of flags, special characters and prepared patterns such as Website URL, Date/Time Formats, French, Persian, Chinese Alphabets etc. you could write long regular expressions that are easy to follow and read.

Main Features

• Simplify Writing Regular Expressions
• Regex Collection
• Helper Methods

Simplify Writing Regular Expressions

The main functions are literal, list and group. They work together by chaining them, take two arguments, one for an expression, the other for special characters, flags etc.

Simple Regex

To create a regex like

r"(?i)(?-i:Don't capture)\s(me)";

one would use the crate as follows:

use easy_regex::{EasyRegex, settings::{base:: DEFAULT, group::{DEFAULT_GROUP, SENSITIVE_NON_CAPTURE}}};

let text = "Don't capture ME";  // a text to be matched by our regex.
let result = EasyRegex::insensitive()
    .group("Don't capture", &SENSITIVE_NON_CAPTURE) // SENSITIVE_NON_CAPTURE refers to  
                                                    // (?-i) and (?: ...) options which  
                                                    // together makes the (?-i: ...) pattern.
    .whitespace(&DEFAULT)
    .group(r"me", &DEFAULT_GROUP);

let captured_text = result.clone().get_regex().unwrap()
    .captures(text).unwrap().get(1).unwrap().as_str();

    assert_eq!(r"(?i)(?-i:Don't capture)\s(me)", result.get_regex().unwrap().as_str());
    assert_eq!("ME", captured_text); // insensitive ME

Long Regex

For

r"^(http|https|ftp):/{2}([a-zA-Z0-9-.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4})(:[0-9]+)?/?([a-zA-Z0-9-._?,'/\\+&%$#=~]*)";

it would be:

use easy_regex::{
    EasyRegex, 
    settings::{Settings, base::*, group::*},
    collection::{ALPHA_NUMERIC, UPPER_LOWER_CASE}
    };

let section_one = EasyRegex::start_of_line()
    .group(r"http|https|ftp", &DEFAULT_GROUP)
    .literal(":", &DEFAULT)
    .literal(r"/", &Settings::exactly(2));

let section_two = EasyRegex::new_section()
    .list(r"a-zA-Z0-9-.", &ONE_OR_MORE)
    .literal(r"\.", &DEFAULT)
    .list(
        &UPPER_LOWER_CASE,
        &Settings::range(Some(2), Some(4))
    )
    .into_group(&DEFAULT)  // put all previous patterns of "section_two" into a group with default options 
                           // i.e. a capturing group like (previous patterns)
    .group(":[0-9]+", &OPTIONAL_GROUP)
    .literal(r"/", &OPTIONAL);

let section_three = EasyRegex::new_section()
    .literal(&ALPHA_NUMERIC, &DEFAULT)
    .literal(r"-._?,'/\\+&%$#=~", &DEFAULT) // special characters need not be scaped
                                                // due to the next method, into_list.
    .into_list(&NIL_OR_MORE)
    .into_group(&DEFAULT);

let collected_sections = format!(
    "{}{}{}",
    section_one.get_regex().unwrap(),
    section_two.get_regex().unwrap(),
    section_three.get_regex().unwrap()
);

let is_result_ok = regex::RegexBuilder::new(&collected_sections).build().is_ok();
assert_eq!(true, is_result_ok);

Regex Collection

There are some regular expressions for complicated patterns as Website URL, Date/Time formats, Non-English Alphabets and so on. Here are some examples.

Date and Time Regex

use easy_regex::{
    EasyRegex, 
    settings::{Settings, group::DEFAULT_GROUP},
    collection::{DATE, TIME_HH_MM_24}
    };

let text = r#"
    Feb 17 2009 5:3am 03/26/1994 8:41 23/7/2030 9:20Pm
    12 Sept 2015 6:14 03-26-1994 02:18 2030/4/27 3:50
"#;
let result = EasyRegex::new_section()
    .group(DATE, &DEFAULT_GROUP)   // will capture any valid format of a date.
    .literal_space()
    .group(TIME_HH_MM_24, &DEFAULT_GROUP);  // will capture hours and minutes in 24-hour clock.
result
    .clone()
    .get_regex()
    .unwrap()
    .captures_iter(text)
    .for_each(|captures| println!("{}", captures.get(0).unwrap().as_str()));
    // The captures will be:
    //   03/26/1994 8:41
    //   12 Sept 2015 6:14
    //   03-26-1994 02:18
    //   2030/4/27 3:50

let matched_patterns_count = result.get_regex().unwrap().captures_iter(text).count();
assert_eq!(4, matched_patterns_count);

French Regex

There are a collection of useful regular expressions for other languages including French.

use easy_regex::{EasyRegex, collection::FRENCH_ALPHABET, settings::base::ONE_OR_MORE};

let text = "Adélaïde Aurélie";
let result = EasyRegex::new_section().list(&FRENCH_ALPHABET, &ONE_OR_MORE);

let count = result.get_regex().unwrap().captures_iter(text).count();
assert_eq!(2, count);

Helper Methods

To make life easier, there are methods for creating certain expressions such as HTML Elements that can have child elements as well. See Helpers.