SRE: Super Regular Expression

Javascript Regular Expressions with Super Powers!

Status: Experimental

Why a Regular Expression framework?

When dealing with complex long regular expression there are a couple of thing you'd like and that Javascript currently does not provide:

• Fragmenting the entire Reg Exp in smaller fragments.
• Commenting / Documenting the Reg Exp.
• Debugging helpers.

And that is exactly what SRE delivers.

Using it

npm install super-regexp

The mini framework is tested using Tape, run npm test to test it, and, inspect test.js to see what the Library can offer.

This is an extract of test.js

var SRE = require('super-regexp');

var s = SRE('Parse a root URL')
			.pat('^(http|https)?', 'Protocol. Its optional.')
			.pat('(://)?', 'Delimiter. Its optional.')
			.pat('(www)?', 'Optional www word')
			.pat('(?:\\.)?', 'Optional  dot.')
			.pat('([^\\.]*)', 'Domain name. Anything but a dot.')
			.pat('(?:\\.)', 'Dot.')
			.pat('([^$/]*)', 'Top level domain. Anything but a forward slash or the end of the string')
			.pat('(?:$|/$)', 'String end')
			.flags('ig');




test('SRE exec', function (t) {
    t.plan(6);

	var result = s.exec('http://www.domain.com');
	var expected = ['http://www.domain.com', 'http', '://', 'www', 'domain', 'com'];

    var i, r, e;
    for (i= 0; i < 6; i++ ) {
    	r = result[i];
    	e = expected[i];
    	t.equal(r, e);
    }
});

In the browser

<script src="dist/superre.js"></script>
<script>
var sre = SuperRegExp()
		.pat()
		.flags();
		
sre.exec(string);
</script>

Debugging

SRE has a debug(string) method that is built to help you debug your faulty Regular Expression. It will run exec(string) several times, adding the patterns one by one. This way you can isolate the issue to each patterns.

See test.js for more details.

Creating a Browser bundle

Install Browserify and run

browserify index.js --standalone SuperRegExp -o dist/superre.js

Creating a Browser test bundle

browserify test.js --standalone Super-RegExp -o dist/test_bundle.js

Or follow this tutorial

Contributing

This is an Open Source project so please, if you think there are improvements to be made in this library please submit a Pull Request or an Issue and we can discuss about it. The requirements of submitting code are that the new pieces are tested with Tape, and possibly in the future that they are linted.

TODO

• Use Native RegExp and /as[\.]*d/.toString() to offer better integration.
• Implement Named-capture. See nice implementation

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2014 Francisco Guijarro

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Copyright 2014 [email protected]