Using regex put string after a pattern

Question

I want to add a string {something} to a string if it contains href=" or href='.

Note - There could be space around the =.

So, if my input is <a href="http://google.com">Click</a>

The output should be <a href="{something}http://google.com">Click</a>

So far, I have this regular expression which matches with what I want to match, but don't know how to add the string after the matching part.

/href\s*=\s*(\"|\')/

I checked need help with regex in javascript to replace string pattern

Why don't you use the DOM to do this?

elclanrs
– elclanrs

2013-02-11 09:30:00 +00:00
Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 9:30 — elclanrs
– elclanrs, Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 9:30

nbrooks · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-11 09:31:08Z

3

General answer, following off of your attempt:

string.replace(/href\s*=\s*(\"|\')/, "href=$1{something}");

(The $1 simply references the captured group, whatever matched your parenthesized expression in your regex)

Correct way to modify an element's href:

element.href = '{something}' + element.href;

answered Feb 11, 2013 at 9:31

nbrooks

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3 Comments

Sandeepan Nath Over a year ago

Thanks, and in my case, I wanted to preserve all the spaces, so this is what I followed - string.replace(/(href\s*=\s*[\"|\']\s*)/,"$1{something}"); For beginners - I am using capturing group - The entire pattern inside the first bracket is captured as $1 - href\s*=\s*[\"|\']\s* and I add {something} after it.

Sandeepan Nath Over a year ago

and btw, I am not modifying an anchor tag in the dom. I am modifying the text of an input field. The anchor tag appears in the content. Not sure if DOM manipulation using element.href will work here.

nbrooks Over a year ago

@Sandeepan You can't replace the parentheses with square brackets around the quotation marks like that—that causes all the characters inside the square brackets to match literally, including the pipe (|). You can instead do this /(href\s*=\s*["']\s*)/, which will match one of the characters in the 'character set', in this case one of the quote marks

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