VerbalExpressions is a Java library that helps to construct difficult regular expressions.

Getting Started

Maven Dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>ru.lanwen.verbalregex</groupId>
  <artifactId>java-verbal-expressions</artifactId>
  <version>1.8</version>
</dependency>

You can use SNAPSHOT dependency with adding to pom.xml:

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>ossrh</id>
    <url>https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots</url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

Examples

VerbalExpression testRegex = VerbalExpression.regex()
                                                .startOfLine().then("http").maybe("s")
                               .then("://")
                               .maybe("www.").anythingBut(" ")
                               .endOfLine()
                               .build();

// Create an example URL
String url = "https://www.google.com";

// Use VerbalExpression's testExact() method to test if the entire string matches the regex
testRegex.testExact(url); //True

testRegex.toString(); // Outputs the regex used:
                      // ^(?:http)(?:s)?(?:\:\/\/)(?:www\.)?(?:[^\ ]*)$

VerbalExpression testRegex = VerbalExpression.regex()
                                                .startOfLine().then("abc").or("def")
                                                .build();

String testString = "defzzz";

//Use VerbalExpression's test() method to test if parts if the string match the regex
testRegex.test(testString);       // true
testRegex.testExact(testString);  // false
testRegex.getText(testString);    // returns: def

Builder can be cloned:

VerbalExpression regex = regex(regex().anything().addModifier('i')).endOfLine().build();

Or can be used in another regex:

VerbalExpression.Builder digits = regex().capt().digit().oneOrMore().endCapt().tab();
VerbalExpression regex2 = regex().add(digits).add(digits).build();

Feel free to use any predefined char groups:

regex().wordChar().nonWordChar()
   .space().nonSpace()
   .digit().nonDigit()

Define captures:

String text = "aaabcd";
VerbalExpression regex = regex()
                .find("a")
                .capture().find("b").anything().endCapture().then("cd").build();

regex.getText(text)     // returns "abcd"
regex.getText(text, 1)  // returns "b"

More complex examples

• Parse long strings example

Other implementations

You can view all implementations on VerbalExpressions.github.io

[ Javascript - PHP - Python - C# - Objective-C - Ruby - Groovy - Haskell - C++ - ... (moarr) ]

Project released with travis

With help of this tutorial: https://dracoblue.net/dev/uploading-snapshots-and-releases-to-maven-central-with-travis/