Python regex pattern to match text inside xml string

Question

I'm parsing an XML file and need to remove some clutter from the final output.

str = <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><chat-message>2018-10

my attempt at a solution is:

re.sub(r'<(\w|\d|\s){1,}>{1,4}',"",str)

and my desired output is:

2018-10

Currently Python is finding no matches and just returning str. I don't think < or > are special characters so no escaping needed; I tried escaping anyway and it still did not work.

Could you give some more examples it's hard to infer what you want to match exactly. For now maybe like re.sub(r'.*>(?!<)', "", str) (We match as much as possible until we hit a > which isn't immediately followed by a <) — Countingstuff
– Countingstuff, Commented Dec 20, 2018 at 19:16

benvc · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-20 19:20:37Z

4

In my opinion you are better off using an XML parser rather than regex. Here is an example using xml.etree.ElementTree:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

xmlstring = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><chat-message>2018-10</chat-message>'
root = ET.fromstring(xmlstring)

print(root.text)
# OUTPUT
# 2018-10

answered Dec 20, 2018 at 19:20

benvc

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3 Comments

M Sanders Over a year ago

Did this already. Remnants of the xml tags remain in the parser output.

benvc Over a year ago

@MSanders If the xml is valid, then you could post an example of the xml that is giving you trouble and we may be able to help.

M Sanders Over a year ago

The xml has a lot of sensitive info in it (SSN, account numbers, etc). The time it would take to redact/remove this info would be insane.

Fred · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-20 19:14:41Z

1

You could try something simpler:

re.sub(r'<.*?>', '', str)

answered Dec 20, 2018 at 19:14

Fred

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1 Comment

M Sanders Over a year ago

Winner winner chicken dinner Fred! The look ahead functionality of regex is very confusing to me. I've read some stuff on-line but cannot wrap my head around it. Thanks.

NathanOliver · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-20 19:48:16Z

0

This regex works for the test case in your question -

r"<[\w\D]+>([-\d]+)"

You can test it here -

https://regex101.com/

edited Dec 20, 2018 at 19:48

NathanOliver

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answered Dec 20, 2018 at 19:46

Divya

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