How to make a regex to replace the value of a key in a json file

Question

I want to make a regex so I can do a "Search/Replace" over a json file with many object. Every object has a key named "resource" containing a URL.

Take a look at these examples:

"resource":"http://www.img/qwer/123/image.jpg"

"resource":"io.nl.info/221/elephant.gif"

"resource":"simgur.com/icon.png"

I want to make a regex to replace the whole url with a string like this: img/filename.format.

This way, the result would be:

"resource":"img/image.jpg"

"resource":"img/elephant.gif"

"resource":"img/icon.png"

I'm just starting with regular expressions and I'm completely lost. I was thinking that one valid idea would be to write something starting with this pattern "resource":"

and ending with the last five characters. But I don't even know how to try that.

How could I write the regular expression?

Thanks in advance!

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

13

Try this:

Find: "resource":\s*"[^"]+?([^\/"]+)"
Replace: "resource":"img/\1

Using [^"]+? ensures the match won't roll off the end of the current entry and gobble up too much input, and it's reluctant (with the added ?) so it gets the whole image file name (instead ofwhat the last character).

Edit:

I added optional whitespace after the key, which your pastebin has.

See a live demo of this regex with your pastebin.

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

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answered Dec 19, 2013 at 21:01

Bohemian♦

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3 Comments

Boel Over a year ago

thanks Bohemian! There is something I don't get. When I try this in a file with one line like this: "resource":"img/qwer/123/image.jpg", then it works, but when I try it with a larger string like the one from this link pastebin.com/DVQSXJ5t there are no matches. Do you know what is happening?

Bohemian Over a year ago

I've improved the regex - try it now

Boel Over a year ago

thanks for the explanation Behemian! I tried the new regex but my text editor still says: "Can't find the text" with the larger string. What could be wrong?

abc123 · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-19 20:55:06Z

5

Regex

.*\/

Regular expression visualization

Debuggex Demo

This will find the text you want to replace. Replace it with img/ if you want to find the whole text you'll need to look for the following Regex:

("resource":").*\/

Regular expression visualization

Debuggex Demo

Then replace with $1img/ this should give you group 1 and the img part.

Let me know if there are any questions

Note: I personally would just use objects since you have the JSON and parse it to a object then iterate over the objects and change each resource on each object independently rather than looking for a magic bullet

answered Dec 19, 2013 at 20:55

abc123

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2 Comments

Bohemian Over a year ago

This won't work except for the most trivial of cases due to the greedy quantifier

abc123 Over a year ago

@Bohemian completely agree, hints my note. :) I could make it more useful i suppose.

SOReader · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-19 21:15:49Z

2

If your JSON is an array of objects containing resource field I would do it in 3 steps: convert to object, find resources and replace them, convert back to string (optional)

var tmp = JSON.parse('<your json>');
for (i = 0; i < tmp.length; ++i) {
    for (e in tmp[i]) 
        if (e == 'resource') 
            tmp[i][e] = tmp[i][e].replace(/.*(?=img\/.*\..*)/,'') 
}
tmp = JSON.stringify(tmp);

answered Dec 19, 2013 at 21:15

SOReader

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