Replace a substring with another string in dynamic content

Question

I want to remove some particular text from my html content. I am using replaceAll method in java to replace the content with "" to achieve that.

My content is

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="fr-CA" xml:lang="fr-CA"> or 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-AU" xml:lang="en-AU"> or
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-GB" xml:lang="en-GB"> or
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-IE" xml:lang="en-IE"> or
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="es-PR" xml:lang="es-PR> or
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US">

I want to remove lang="-" xml:lang="-" As you can see, value of lang and xml:lang is changing dynamically. So I want a regular expression which can detect this particular string sequence then I will replace it with "" using replaceAll(regex, string) method in java.

You should use for example jsoup to do that. Take a look at this post: stackoverflow.com/questions/18281894/… — Casimir et Hippolyte
– Casimir et Hippolyte, Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 11:00
Don't use regex. Use parser. Generate DOM, remove elements/attributes you don't want and return altered structure. One of simplest and cleanest parsers is Jsoup. — Pshemo
– Pshemo, Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 11:02
Is <html xmlns=".." ...> or <html xmlns=".." ...> real content, or did you perhaps mean that content can be <html xmlns=".." ...> or <html xmlns=".." ...>? — Pshemo
– Pshemo, Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 11:18

Pshemo · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-21 07:12:35Z

This answer is based on assumption that

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="fr-CA" xml:lang="fr-CA"> or 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-AU" xml:lang="en-AU"> or
...

means that you have HTML structures like

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="fr-CA" xml:lang="fr-CA">
   ...
</html>

or

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-AU" xml:lang="en-AU">
   ...
</html>

In that case instead of regex use HTML/XML parser like Jsoup. Your code could look like

String htmlText = 
        "<html xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\" lang=\"fr-CA\" xml:lang=\"fr-CA\">" +
        "   <body>hello</body>" +
        "</html>";

//use XML parser if you don't want Jsoup to change optimize your HTML code
Document doc = Jsoup.parse(htmlText,"",Parser.xmlParser());
Elements htmlTag = doc.select("html");
htmlTag.removeAttr("lang").removeAttr("xml:lang");//remove these attributes from selected tag

String replaced = doc.toString();
System.out.println(replaced);

Pedro Lobito · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-29 11:16:57Z

You can try this:

$strings = <<< LOL
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="fr-CA" xml:lang="fr-CA">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-AU" xml:lang="en-AU">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-GB" xml:lang="en-GB">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-IE" xml:lang="en-IE">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="es-PR" xml:lang="es-PR">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US">
LOL;

$strings = preg_replace('/(lang=".*?"|xml:lang=".*?")/', '', $strings);

echo $strings;

Output:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"  >
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"  >
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"  >
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"  >
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"  >
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"  >

Demo:

http://ideone.com/vhtVcW

Regex Explanation:

(lang=".*?"|xml:lang=".*?")

Match the regex below and capture its match into backreference number 1 «(lang=".*?"|xml:lang=".*?")»
   Match this alternative «lang=".*?"»
      Match the character string “lang="” literally «lang="»
      Match any single character that is NOT a line break character «.*?»
         Between zero and unlimited times, as few times as possible, expanding as needed (lazy) «*?»
      Match the character “"” literally «"»
   Or match this alternative «xml:lang=".*?"»
      Match the character string “xml:lang="” literally «xml:lang="»
      Match any single character that is NOT a line break character «.*?»
         Between zero and unlimited times, as few times as possible, expanding as needed (lazy) «*?»
      Match the character “"” literally «"»

Bowsska · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-29 11:11:38Z

0

text.replaceAll("\\w?{3}:?lang=\"\\S*\"", "");

This should do the job.

answered Apr 29, 2015 at 11:11

Bowsska

1268 bronze badges

1 Comment

Thom Over a year ago

While this code may solve the problem, a few words of explanation would help all of the readers to gain more insight into the solution.

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