Can Regular Expressions Effectively Parse HTML in Java?

Using Regular Expressions to Parse HTML in Java

Identifying HTML elements such as href and src tags can be achieved through regular expressions, although it's often not recommended. If you're still considering this approach, let's delve into how to accomplish it in Java:

Parsing with Regular Expressions

To find href tags, you can use a regex like:

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<a.*?href=\"(.*?)\".*?>");

To find src tags:

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<img.*?src=\"(.*?)\".*?>");

Extracting URLs

Once you have the patterns, you can match them against your HTML string and capture the URL groups:

Matcher m = p.matcher(htmlString);
while (m.find()) {
  String url = m.group(1);
}

Recommendation

However, it's strongly advised to use an HTML parser instead of regular expressions. HTML structure is intricate, and regular expressions can often overlook edge cases. A dedicated HTML parser like JSoup is much more adept at interpreting HTML and reliably extracting the desired elements.

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