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Java how to check multiple regex patterns against an input?

(If I'm taking the complete wrong direction let me know if there is a better way I should be approaching this)
I have a Java program that will have multiple patterns that I want to compare against an input. If one of the patterns matches then I want to save that value in a String. I can get it to work with a single pattern but I'd like to be able to check against many.
Right now I have this to check if an input matches one pattern:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("TST\\w{1,}");
Matcher match = pattern.matcher(input);
String ID = match.find()?match.group():null;
So, if the input was TST1234 or abcTST1234 then ID = "TST1234"
I want to have multiple patterns like:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("TST\\w{1,}");
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("TWT\\w{1,}");
...
and then to a collection and then check each one against the input:
List<Pattern> rxs = new ArrayList<Pattern>();
rxs.add(pattern);
rxs.add(pattern2);
String ID = null;
for (Pattern rx : rxs) {
if (rx.matcher(requestEnt).matches()){
ID = //???
}
}
I'm not sure how to set ID to what I want. I've tried
ID = rx.matcher(requestEnt).group();
and
ID = rx.matcher(requestEnt).find()?rx.matcher(requestEnt).group():null;
Not really sure how to make this work or where to go from here though. Any help or suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.
EDIT: Yes the patterns will change over time. So The patten list will grow.
I just need to get the string of the match...ie if the input is abcTWT123 it will first check against "TST\w{1,}", then move on to "TWT\w{1,}" and since that matches the ID String will be set to "TWT123".

To collect the matched string in the result you may need to create a group in your regexp if you are matching less than the entire string:
List<Pattern> patterns = new ArrayList<>();
patterns.add(Pattern.compile("(TST\\w+)");
...
Optional<String> result = Optional.empty();
for (Pattern pattern: patterns) {
Matcher matcher = pattern.match();
if (matcher.matches()) {
result = Optional.of(matcher.group(1));
break;
}
}
Or, if you are familiar with streams:
Optional<String> result = patterns.stream()
.map(Pattern::match).filter(Matcher::matches)
.map(m -> m.group(1)).findFirst();
The alternative is to use find (as in #Raffaele's answer) that implicitly creates a group.
Another alternative you may want to consider is to put all your matches into a single pattern.
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(TST\\w+|TWT\\w+|...");
Then you can match and group in a single operation. However this might might it harder to change the matches over time.
Group 1 is the first matched group (i.e. the match inside the first set of parentheses). Group 0 is the entire match. So if you want the entire match (I wasn't sure from your question) then you could perhaps use group 0.

Use an alternation | (a regex OR):
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("TST\\w+|TWT\\w+|etc");
Then just check the pattern once.
Note also that {1,} can be replaced with +.

Maybe you just need to end the loop when the first pattern matches:
// TST\\w{1,}
// TWT\\w{1,}
private List<Pattern> patterns;
public String findIdOrNull(String input) {
for (Pattern p : patterns) {
Matcher m = p.matcher(input);
// First match. If the whole string must match use .matches()
if (m.find()) {
return m.group(0);
}
}
return null; // Or throw an Exception if this should never happen
}

If your patterns are all going to be simple prefixes like your examples TST and TWT you can define all of those at once, and user regex alternation | so you won't need to loop over the patterns.
An example:
String prefixes = "TWT|TST|WHW";
String regex = "(" + prefixes + ")\\w+";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
String input = "abcTST123";
Matcher match = pattern.matcher(input);
String ID = match.find() ? match.group() : null;
// given this, ID will come out as "TST123"
Now prefixes could be read in from a java .properties file, or a simple text file; or passed as a parameter to the method that does this.
You could also define the prefixes as a comma-separated list or one-per-line in a file then process that to turn them into one|two|three|etc before passing it on.
You may be looping over several inputs, and then you would want to create the regex and pattern variables only once, creating only the Matcher for each separate input.

“minus-sign” into this regular expression. How?

Consider:
String str = "XYhaku(ABH1235-123548)";
From the above string, I need only "ABH1235-123548" and so far I created a regular expression:
Pattern.compile("ABH\\d+")
But it returns false. So what the correct regular expression for it?

I would just grab whatever is in the parenthesis:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\((?<data>[A-Z\\d]+\\-\\d+)\\)");
Or, if you want to be even more open (any parenthesis):
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\((?<data>.+\\)\\)");
Then just nab it:
String s = /* some input */;
Matcher m = p.matcher(s);
if (m.find()) { //just find first
String tag = m.group("data"); //ABH1235-123548
}

\d only matches digits. To include other characters, use a character class:
Pattern.compile("ABH[\\d-]+")
Note that the - must be placed first or last in the character class, because otherwise it will be treated as a range indicator ([A-Z] matching every letter between A and Z, for example). Another way to avoid that would be to escape it, but that adds two more backslashes to your string...

Java regex for matching multiple keys in a string

Consider an input string like
Number ONE=1 appears before TWO=2 and THREE=3 comes before FOUR=4 and FIVE=5
and the regular expression
\b(TWO|FOUR)=([^ ]*)\b
Using this regular expression, the following code can extract the 2 specific key-value pairs out of the 5 total ones (i.e., only some predefined key-value pairs should be extracted).
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
String input = "Number ONE=1 appears before TWO=2 and THREE=3 comes before FOUR=4 and FIVE=5";
String regex = "\\b(TWO|FOUR)=([^ ]*)\\b";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println("\t" + matcher.group(1) + " = " + matcher.group(2));
}
}
More specifically, the main() method above prints
TWO = 2
FOUR = 4
but every time find() is invoked, the whole regular expression is evaluated for the part of the string remaining after the latest match, left to right.
Also, if the keys are not mutually distinct (or, if a regular expression with overlapping matches was used in the place of each key), there will be multiple matches. For instance, if the regex becomes
\b(O.*?|T.*?)=([^ ]*)\b
the above method yields
ONE = 1
TWO = 2
THREE = 3
If the regex was not fully re-evaluated but each alternative part was somehow examined once (or, if an appropriately modified regex was used), the output would have been
ONE = 1
TWO = 2
So, two questions:
Is there a more efficient way of extracting a selected set of unique keys and their values, compared to the original regular expression?
Is there a regular expression that can match every alternative part of the OR (|) sub-expression exactly once and not evaluate it again?

Java Returns a Match Position: You can Use Dynamically-Generated Regex on Remaining Substrings
With the understanding that it can be generalized to a more complex and useful scenario, let's take a variation on your first example: \b(TWO|FOUR|SEVEN)=([^ ]*)\b
You can use it like this:
Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("\\b(TWO|FOUR|SEVEN)=([^ ]*)\\b");
Matcher regexMatcher = regex.matcher(yourString);
if (regexMatcher.find()) {
String theMatch = regexMatcher.group();
String FoundToken = = regexMatcher.group(1);
String EndPosition = regexMatcher.end();
}
You could then:
Test the value contained by FoundToken
Depending on that value, dynamically generate a regex testing for the remaining possible tokens. For instance, if you found FOUR, your new regex would be \\b(TWO|SEVEN)=([^ ]*)\\b
Using EndPosition, apply that regex to the end of the string.
Discussion
This approach would serve your goal of not re-evaluating parts of the OR that have already matched.
It also serves your goal of avoiding duplicates.
Would that be faster? Not in this simple case. But you said you are dealing with a real problem, and it will be a valid approach in some cases.

Regular expression match a-alphanumeric&b-digits&c-digits

I have query about java regular expressions. Actually, I am new to regular expressions.
So I need help to form a regex for the statement below:
Statement: a-alphanumeric&b-digits&c-digits
Possible matching Examples: 1) a-90485jlkerj&b-34534534&c-643546
2) A-RT7456ffgt&B-86763454&C-684241
Use case: First of all I have to validate input string against the regular expression. If the input string matches then I have to extract a value, b value and c value like
90485jlkerj, 34534534 and 643546 respectively.
Could someone please share how I can achieve this in the best possible way?
I really appreciate your help on this.

you can use this pattern :
^(?i)a-([0-9a-z]++)&b-([0-9]++)&c-([0-9]++)$
In the case what you try to match is not the whole string, just remove the anchors:
(?i)a-([0-9a-z]++)&b-([0-9]++)&c-([0-9]++)
explanations:
(?i) make the pattern case-insensitive
[0-9]++ digit one or more times (possessive)
[0-9a-z]++ the same with letters
^ anchor for the string start
$ anchor for the string end
Parenthesis in the two patterns are capture groups (to catch what you want)

Given a string with the format a-XXX&b-XXX&c-XXX, you can extract all XXX parts in one simple line:
String[] parts = str.replaceAll("[abc]-", "").split("&");
parts will be an array with 3 elements, being the target strings you want.
The simplest regex that matches your string is:
^(?i)a-([\\da-z]+)&b-(\\d+)&c-(\\d+)
With your target strings in groups 1, 2 and 3, but you need lot of code around that to get you the strings, which as shown above is not necessary.

Following code will help you:
String[] texts = new String[]{"a-90485jlkerj&b-34534534&c-643546", "A-RT7456ffgt&B-86763454&C-684241"};
Pattern full = Pattern.compile("^(?i)a-([\\da-z]+)&b-(\\d+)&c-(\\d+)");
Pattern patternA = Pattern.compile("(?i)([\\da-z]+)&[bc]");
Pattern patternB = Pattern.compile("(\\d+)");
for (String text : texts) {
if (full.matcher(text).matches()) {
for (String part : text.split("-")) {
Matcher m = patternA.matcher(part);
if (m.matches()) {
System.out.println(part.substring(m.start(), m.end()).split("&")[0]);
}
m = patternB.matcher(part);
if (m.matches()) {
System.out.println(part.substring(m.start(), m.end()));
}
}
}
}

String Pattern Matching In Java

I want to search for a given string pattern in an input sting.
For Eg.
String URL = "https://localhost:8080/sbs/01.00/sip/dreamworks/v/01.00/cui/print/$fwVer/{$fwVer}/$lang/en/$model/{$model}/$region/us/$imageBg/{$imageBg}/$imageH/{$imageH}/$imageSz/{$imageSz}/$imageW/{$imageW}/movie/Kung_Fu_Panda_two/categories/3D_Pix/item/{item}/_back/2?$uniqueID={$uniqueID}"
Now I need to search whether the string URL contains "/{item}/". Please help me.
This is an example. Actually I need is check whether the URL contains a string matching "/{a-zA-Z0-9}/"

You can use the Pattern class for this. If you want to match only word characters inside the {} then you can use the following regex. \w is a shorthand for [a-zA-Z0-9_]. If you are ok with _ then use \w or else use [a-zA-Z0-9].
String URL = "https://localhost:8080/sbs/01.00/sip/dreamworks/v/01.00/cui/print/$fwVer/{$fwVer}/$lang/en/$model/{$model}/$region/us/$imageBg/{$imageBg}/$imageH/{$imageH}/$imageSz/{$imageSz}/$imageW/{$imageW}/movie/Kung_Fu_Panda_two/categories/3D_Pix/item/{item}/_back/2?$uniqueID={$uniqueID}";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("/\\{\\w+\\}/");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(URL);
if (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(0)); //prints /{item}/
} else {
System.out.println("Match not found");
}

That's just a matter of String.contains:
if (input.contains("{item}"))
If you need to know where it occurs, you can use indexOf:
int index = input.indexOf("{item}");
if (index != -1) // -1 means "not found"
{
...
}
That's fine for matching exact strings - if you need real patterns (e.g. "three digits followed by at most 2 letters A-C") then you should look into regular expressions.
EDIT: Okay, it sounds like you do want regular expressions. You might want something like this:
private static final Pattern URL_PATTERN =
Pattern.compile("/\\{[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\}/");
...
if (URL_PATTERN.matcher(input).find())

If you want to check if some string is present in another string, use something like String.contains
If you want to check if some pattern is present in a string, append and prepend the pattern with '.*'. The result will accept strings that contain the pattern.
Example: Suppose you have some regex a(b|c) that checks if a string matches ab or ac
.*(a(b|c)).* will check if a string contains a ab or ac.
A disadvantage of this method is that it will not give you the location of the match, you can use java.util.Mather.find() if you need the position of the match.

You can do it using string.indexOf("{item}"). If the result is greater than -1 {item} is in the string