Using RegEx to Identify parts of a Database Connection String

Question

I'm trying to get to grips with regular expressions:

I have a database connection string and I'd like to use a regular expression to identify specific Keys and Values within it.

For example

server=foo;database=bar;uid=foo;pwd=bar

I'd like something to return "database=bar;" using the 'database' key to identify it, ideally it would be case insensitive. I can do this using normal code, but I think that this is exactly the sort of thing for which regular expressions were designed.

Thomas · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-30 12:29:27Z

10

database=([^;]*);

should do the trick. It matches the string database=, followed by any sequence of zero or more non-semicolons, followed by a semicolon. The sequence of non-semicolons is parenthesized, so you can later extract the text that matched this part of the regex.

How to specify case insensitivity, and how to extract the value of the parenthesized thing, depends on the language you're using.

answered Mar 30, 2010 at 12:29

Thomas

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4 Comments

VikingProgrammer Over a year ago

This is exactly what I was after and much more elegant that the code I'd originally written. Thank you Thomas.

InTheWorldOfCodingApplications Over a year ago

It gives back database= , Can we ignore "database=" and only fetch the exact name of database

Thomas Over a year ago

Yes. Like I said, it's language dependent.

Deantwo Over a year ago

You forgot about the initial catalog= alias. I suggest changing the first part to (database=|initial catalog=) instead so it works with both.

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