ObjectiveCVerbalExpressions

Objective-C Regular Expressions made easy

ObjectiveCVerbalExpressions is a Objective-C library that helps to construct difficult regular expressions - ported from the awesome JavaScript VerbalExpressions.

Examples

Here's a couple of simple examples to give an idea of how VerbalExpressions works:

Testing if we have a valid URL

// Create an example of how to test for correctly formed URLs
OCVerbalExpression *expressions = [[OCVerbalExpression alloc] init];
[expressions startOfLine:YES];
[expressions then:@"http"];
[expressions maybe:@"s"];
[expressions then:@"://"];
[expressions maybe:@"www"];
[expressions anythingBut:@" "];
[expressions endOfLine:YES];

// Create an example URL
NSString *testMe = @"https://www.google.com";

// Use test: method
if ([expressions test:testMe]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", @"We have a correct URL"); // This output will fire
} else {
    NSLog(@"%@", @"The URL is incorrect");
}

NSLog(@"%@", tester); // Ouputs the actual expression used: "^(http)(s)?(:�_/�_/)(www)?([^ ]*)$"

Replacing strings

NSString *replaceMe = @"Replace bird with a duck";

// Create an expression that seeks for word "bird"
OCVerbalExpression *expressions1 = [[OCVerbalExpression alloc] init];
[expressions1 find:@"bird"];

// Execute the expression like a normal RegExp object
NSString *result = [expressions1 replaceWithSource:replaceMe value:@"duck"];

NSLog(@"%@", result); // Outputs "Replace duck with a duck"

Shorthand for string replace:

NSString *result2 = [[[OCVerbalExpression new] find:@"red"] replaceWithSource:@"We have a red house" value:@"blue"];

NSLog(@"%@", result2); // Outputs "We have a blue house"

Complex example:

// Example where you have an HTML string where you want to take out img tags that have either no extension or a
// pdf, doc, docx, xls, xlsx extension
NSString *HTML = @"<div><img src=\"asd1\"></div> <div><img src=\"asd2.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd3.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd4.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd5.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd6.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd7.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd8.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd9.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd11.pdf\"></div><div><img src=\"asd111\"></div><div><img src=\"asd1111.xls\"></div><div><img src=\"asd11111.png\"></div><div><img src=\"asd222.jpg\"></div><div><img src=\"asd343.xlsx\"></div>";
    
OCVerbalExpression *complexExpr = [OCVerbalExpression new];
[[[[[[[complexExpr find:@"<div><img"]
            anythingBut:@">"]
            anyWhiteSpace]
                   then:@"src"]
            anyWhiteSpace]
                   then:@"="]
            anyWhiteSpace];
    
[complexExpr then:[OCVerbalExpression orWithObjects:@[@"'", @"\""]]];
[complexExpr anythingBut:[OCVerbalExpression orWithObjects:@[@"'", @".", @"\""]]];
[complexExpr thenWithGroup:^{
    [complexExpr thenWithGroup:^{
        [complexExpr then:@"."];
        [complexExpr then:[OCVerbalExpression orWithObjects:@[@"pdf", @"doc", @"docx", @"xls", @"xlsx"]]];
        [complexExpr then:[OCVerbalExpression orWithObjects:@[@"'", @"\""]]];
    }];
    [complexExpr orWithGroup:^{
        [complexExpr then:@"'"];
        [complexExpr or:@"\""];
    }];
}];
[[[[complexExpr anyWhiteSpace] then:@">"] anyWhiteSpace] then:@"</div>"];

NSString *result2 = [complexExpr replaceWithSource:HTML value:@""];
NSLog(@"%@", result2); // <div><img src="asd11111.png"></div><div><img src="asd222.jpg"></div>

API documentation

I haven't added much documentation to this repo yet, but you can find the documentation for the original JavaScript repo on their wiki. Most of the methods have been ported as of v0.1.0 of the JavaScript repo. Just be sure to use the syntax explained above rather than the dot notation :)

Contributions

Clone the repo and fork! Pull requests are warmly welcomed!

Issues

• I haven't yet ported the stopAtFirst method.

Thanks!

Thank you to @jehna for coming up with the awesome original idea!