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I want to extract from a connectionString (a string variable) the server and database names. The name of the server and database change as we move from DEV to STAGE and then PROD.

Here's an example:

Data Source=SERVER_XYZ;Initial Catalog=DATABASE_XYZ;User ID=us;Password=pass

Data Source=SERVER_XYZPQR;Initial Catalog=DATABASE_XYZPQR;User ID=us;Password=pass

Notice the name changes (as well as lengths of the whole string).

How do I capture the data source and initial catalog without knowing the length it's going to be? So that on form load, it'll get the Server & Database name to display to the user (so he/she can see which server and database he/she is connected to?

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  • What language are you working in? Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 21:29
  • 1
    @Daniel not when .net provides a class to handle this Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 21:58
  • 3
    @Daniel: you have a problem and decide to solve it using a regex. Now you have two ... Commented Aug 4, 2012 at 8:19
  • IMHO regex's are a great addition to a developers toolbox, just that I don't think it should be used as a hammer... Commented Aug 4, 2012 at 9:04

2 Answers 2

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40

You can use the connection string builder class which once constructed has datasource and initial catalog properties

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.sqlclient.sqlconnectionstringbuilder.aspx

string connStr = "Data Source=SERVERx;Initial Catalog=DBx;User ID=u;Password=p"; 

var csb = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(connStr);

string dataSource = csb.DataSource;
string initialCatalog = csb.InitialCatalog;

Let the .net framework do the work for you ;) no messing about with substrings or regexs

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6 Comments

ah thanks! a different way of doing it.
+1 I like this better than the accepted answer because it's less prone to bugs IMAO.
@user1336632 you shouldn't think of this as an alternative solution; this is the correct solution! When the .net framework provides a class to handle your scenario, you really should be using it.
+1 : Regex is fun, but this makes far much more sense than my answer. I didn't even know the SqlConnectionStringBuilder class existed! Using as a boiler plate now for building my connection strings now.
Very clean and elegant solution! nice! I did the same with OracleConnectionStringBuilder - worked like a charm , saved me a lot of headache
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A C# Regex solution:

String input = "Data Source=SERVER_XYZ;Initial Catalog=DATABASE_XYZ;User ID=us;Password=pass";

// Match the server:
Match serverMatch = Regex.Match(input, @"Source=([A-Za-z0-9_.]+)", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

// Match the database:
Match databaseMatch = Regex.Match(input, @"Catalog=([A-Za-z0-9_]+)", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

// Get the string
if (serverMatch.Success)
{
  String server = serverMatch.Groups[1].Value;
}

Keep in mind valid characters for URLs:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-._~:/?#[]@!$&'()*+,;=
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3 Comments

and then to display it simply do this? lblServer.Text = serverMatch.ToString(); lblDatabase.Text = databaseMatch.ToString();
that worked. what if I don't want to display the "Source=" and "Catalog=" ?
that worked. thanks! :) ps. regex and Linq have some real ugly syntaxes!

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