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Getting All The Link Labels From A String In ColdFusion
By Raymond Camden
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-11-08
A reader asked me how they could use regex to find all the link labels in a string.
Not the links - but the label for the link. It is relatively easy to grab all the matches for a regex in ColdFusion 8, consider the following code block:
<cfsavecontent variable="s">
This is some text. It is true that <a href="http://www.cnn.com">Harry Potter</a> is a good
magician, but the real <a href="http://www.coldfusionjedi.com">question</a> is how he would stand up
against Godzilla. That is what I want to <a href="http://www.adobe.com">see</a> - a Harry Potter vs Godzilla
grudge match. Harry has his wand, Godzilla has his <a href="http://www.cfsilence.com">breath</a>, it would
be <i>so</i> cool.
</cfsavecontent>
<cfset matches = reMatch("<[aA].*?>.*?</[aA]>",s)>
<cfdump var="#matches#">
I create a string with a few links in it. I then use the new reMatch function to grab all the matches. My regex says - find all HTML links. It isn't exactly perfect, it won't match a closing A tag that has an extra space in it, but you get the picture. This results in a match of all the links:
But you will notice that the HTML links are still there. How can we get rid of them? I simply looped over the array and did a second pass:
<cfset links = arrayNew(1)>
<cfloop index="a" array="#matches#">
<cfset arrayAppend(links, rereplace(a, "<.*?>","","all"))>
</cfloop>
<cfdump var="#links#">
This gives you the following output:
p.s. Running on ColdFusion 7? Try the reFindAll UDF as a replacement to reMatch.
Comments
About the Author:
Raymond Camden, ray@camdenfamily.com
http://ray.camdenfamily.com
Raymond Camden is Vice President of Technology for roundpeg, Inc. A long
time ColdFusion user, Raymond has worked on numerous ColdFusion books
and is the creator of many of the most popular ColdFusion community web
sites. He is an Adobe Community Expert, user group manager, and the
proud father of three little bundles of joy.
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