String Pattern Matching In Java

Question

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}/"

Answer 1

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");
}

Answer 2

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())